Tin Anniversary
by The Real Syko
Summary: 10 years have passed and Mobius is a bombedout shell of its former self. With the freedom fighters embattled on all sides, can they survive? Rerevised to M.
1. Chapter 1

Prelude

This is a tale of victory and loss, a of triumph and defeat, of good and evil. It is the story of a world on uneasy balance, of conflict, of despair. Above all, this is the story of the turning point of the fate of the universe. This is not a tale for the faint-hearted.

_And whence the mage hath restored the emerald,  
__The world will for sure be lost_

_Lest yonder mage to th' just be held,  
__By five great ones whose might hast been must,_

_Two hedgehogs tainted with chaos pure  
__And two whose bodies are clean and pure_

_The bastard scion of two heavenly beings,  
__Father yoko and mother angel  
__The orphaned king shall conquer then  
__And yonder mage shall burn in hell. _Kitsune lore, c. 2000 BC

Chapter 1

Sonic ran through the workshop in a hurry.

"Tails? Tails? We're leaving in ten minutes!"

"Just a second!" The young fox called from behind a damaged tank. He had just turned 18 a few months ago, and had been part of the away team ever since. He hopped over it, grabbing a few guns and stuffing them into his pack as he went.

"Hurry up!"

"Yeah, yeah…"

Sonic ran the whole way to the helipad. Tails arrived a few minutes later and caught his breath as he got in.

"Everyone got everything?" Sonic asked. Tails checked through his pack for all the various firearms and gadgets.

"Got my guns right here!" Knuckles said as he punched his fist against his palm. Julie cocked her blaster.

"Let's see… roll call… one, two, three… yep! Got everything." Amy said as she counted the quarterstaff, sword and hammer stashed on her back. Sonic put his hand on the pistol in his holster to reassure himself.

"Let's go!" He called to Jet, piloting the chopper.

The helicopter raised itself above the serene tree canopy of the broken forestland. It swiftly left the tranquil greenery for mountainous scrub. The fortified gate that protected their homeland passed underneath; a guard waved to them as they passed overhead. Another ten minutes later and the terrain could not have been more unforgiving. Jet set the craft down in one of the maze of ravines that stretched for miles around.

"I'll be back in two hours. Send up a flare for your extraction!" He called after them as they got out. The chopper lifted away and disappeared over the rim of the canyon. Everyone looked around.

"So… which way, Tails?" Knuckles asked, a little clueless.

"Uh… damn… I need to pee…"

"Fine…" Tails ran over to the canyon wall and undid his flys. He sighed with relief.

Amy heard a noise. Some footsteps.

"What's that?"

"It can't be Shadow or Rouge, they're not due out today."

The sound got louder. Amy pulled the sword slowly from its scabbard on her back. It was a long thin katana, very lightweight, but still strong.

"Hide!" She whispered loudly. Sonic and Knuckles ducked behind a rock. Tails hastily pulled his flys up and ran behind another. He pulled a shotgun from his pack. Amy backed up against the far wall. Julie hid herself in a hole behind a rock on Amy's side. Four of Eggman's soldiers appeared around the corner, accompanied by eight hover-bots, series SIPR-2002, relatively basic. This was a routine patrol. Eggman is clearly not expecting trouble. The patrol wandered into the middle of the canyon. Not one of them noticed Amy's bright pink furry face as they went round the corner. The patrol noticed footsteps on the ground. One of the humans stooped to inspect them. He swiftly got up.

"They're around here somewhere!"

Suddenly, Amy shouted:

"NOW!" She leapt from her cover and placed a well-timed slash to a robot's neck, causing its head to pop off. She carried her momentum into the robot and used it to knock a soldier over. While this was happening, Sonic and Knuckles leapt over the rock behind which they were hiding. Knuckles leapt on a robot and put his fist into the body shell. Those thick leather gloves came in handy. Sonic leapt on to another robot. He was behind the robot, so it couldn't see him or shoot him. He pulled out his pistol and shot the robot between the eyes. He jumped off before it collapsed to the ground. Also during this, Tails had hopped up behind the rock and shot two robots and a human. He then threw the shotgun a side, as it carried too high a risk of hitting a friend. He instead pulled out two pistols and advanced towards them firing at them. Knuckles punched a soldier in the face and kneed him in the stomach, causing him to double over. He spun him around and snapped his neck. Sonic hit a robot across the face with the butt of the pistol. The robot spun around in the air. It came to a stop facing the barrel of Sonic's pistol. He unloaded another shot right between the eyes. Amy stuck her sword through a robot. She pushed herself into it. As she carried forward, she pulled the hammer from her back and smashed it into the last robot's face. She jumped off and pulled her sword out, and the robot carried on a few metres. She swung the hammer into the soldier lying on the ground, spraying a few drops of blood on her white and pink boots. She turned to the last remaining human. In a triple spin, she appeared to have not hit him, but for the flecks of blood she was now spattered with. She stood there, admiring her handiwork. The soldier's head promptly slid off and his body off of his legs. The dismembered legs fell over a few seconds later.

"Damn! Blood never comes out!"

"Amy… you always say that, and it always does come out,"

"I know, but it makes for a good rhetoric." She giggled.

"Base to away team… Base to away team…" crackled the message over the radio on Tails' pack. He went to answer it. Amy snatched it off him.

"Cream?"

"Hi!"

They conversed at length about personal matters, while everyone else scoffed and picked up their discarded items. Since Cream was rescued ten years ago, Amy had been protective of her, even a mother figure. The two were the closest of friends. Amy was now 22 and being sent out on missions, so Cream, 16, worked in the mission support centre.

"Anyway, I hate to cut things short…"

"Finally!" Sonic said in the background.

"…I'm going to ignore that. Anyway, there's a small hold of Eggman's troops a short way from your location, so make your way there and see how hot it is. If you can take it, go for it, but if it's too big, we'll send in Shadow's team to help you,"

"Got it."

"I'm uploading it to your GPS now." Tails pulled a small device from his pack. He pressed a few buttons and saw a blinking red dot. He pointed in the direction from which the soldiers had come.

"That way!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

They hid behind a small ridge of rocks. Sonic peeked an eye around the side. It was a fairly small camp. Eggman was clearly underestimating the forces. But small as it was, there was only five of them and at least fifty in the camp. Sonic grabbed the radio from Tails' pack and said into it:

"Put Shadow on standby"

Tails took a small round metal object and pressed a button on it. He threw it into the centre of the camp. A guard turned to inspect it. Tails counted with his fingers. Three, two, one…

With a colossal noise and a fireball to match, the small metal ball exploded, sending the inspecting guard high into the air. He fell to the ground in a charred heap. With this distraction, Sonic, Knuckles and Amy leapt over the rocks. Tails and Julie provided covering fire.

With her sword in one hand and a long hammer in the other, Amy sliced open a tent. A robot repair tent. She quickly laid waste to the damaged automatons, as all the engineers had since fled the tent. Knuckles broke into the main barracks tent. He found himself faced with twenty odd soldiers scrambling for their guns. He picked up a bed – a cheap, light, military issue bed – and hurled it at someone. He went to the nearest soldier. He pulled the gun, which pulled the soldier with it. Using him as a human shield, advanced to the next one.

He threw the body into one soldier, shot him, and took his gun. With the two butts, he fought through three more. Sonic burst through the back of the tent, causing panic and confusion. A cowardly soldier leapt out the side of the tent. He promptly got hit by a shot from Julie's blaster.

Knuckles used the distraction to get the drop on two more guards: As the befuddled soldiers turned once again, Sonic put bullets in four of them. Knuckles was now close enough to the last seven to deal with them personally. He punched one in the stomach and kneed him in the face. He kicked off the bed and handed over another, and landed on the shoulders of a third. In a reverse suplex, he flipped him over and landed on his head. Sonic hit one with the butt of his gun and kicked him into a wooden side table. He shot another in the stomach and used his crumpling body to as a stepping stone to the next one. He put a bullet in the top of his head. Knuckles tackled one more into a wooden table. It broke and stuck a wooden stake through the unfortunate soldier. Both Sonic and Knuckles cast a steely gaze towards the last remaining soldier. He dropped his gun and ran away screaming. He fell to his knees as he was hit by one of Tails' rifle rounds.

Amy slipped unnoticed into the second tent. A kitchen. Nobody was around. She explored a little. Six armoured guards burst in, yelling things like, "Drop your weapons!" "Down on the ground!" "Put your hands where I can see them!" She paused. She tightened her grip on her sword and hammer. "Shit! Shoot her! Shoot her! Shoot her!"

She ducked. Two of the guards shot each other. She knocked the guns away from the others with her hammer. She let it fly into the face of one of them. She stuck her sword into another. She pulled it up so that it cut half of him in half. Her face was sprayed with blood. She pushed him away with the sword still in him. She pulled the quarterstaff from her back and swung it into the head of one of the soldiers. With the other end, she winded the other and brought it up into his face. She spun the staff around and hit them both in the head at the same time. She brought the staff up and pushed it down on both their heads, knocking them both to the ground. She slid back into its holder on her back. She slowly took the hammer and sword, cleaned the blood off them, and put them back on her back.

Back behind the rock, returning fire had become thin. Tails and Julie decided to venture forth. Tails stashed his rifle in favour of a shotgun. Cautiously moving forward, the camp appeared to be deserted. They joined back up with Sonic & Knuckles. Amy appeared through the tent's cloth doors. Her face was soaked in blood.

"Oh my God! What happened to you?"

"It got a little messy," she said in a somewhat blasé manner.

"You don't fucking well say," Tails added.

Suddenly Julie's eyes rolled, and she slowly fell to her knees. Knuckles stared in horror at her as blood seeped from her mouth. As she fell to the ground, he saw a soldier laying on the ground a few metres away holding a smoking gun. A smile crept across his face, and then he went limp, dead.

Knuckles immediately dropped to inspect Julie. There was a gaping bullet wound in her back. He held back a tear.

"Julie…"

"Knuckles, I…" She struggled.

"Yes?" He answered in desperation.

"I… I l… love… y…" She said all she could before she let out her last breath. Knuckles collapsed his head into her chest.

"I love you too, Julie…" He whispered. He began crying into her chest.

Sonic let up a flare.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Knuckles was completely inconsolable. He spent three whole days in his room, refusing to come out. When he finally did come out, he had dark tearstains on his cheeks. He never strayed far, as he kept Julie's body in his room until the funeral. He guarded it closely, and wouldn't let anyone near it. For the funeral, he cleaned and dressed the body himself and carried it to the funeral. After the funeral, he wouldn't talk to anyone, not even Sonic or Tails, and stayed completely holed up in his room for the rest of the day.

The next day, however, he was determined to make a fresh start. He rose early, and worked hard to keep his mind off things. As he watched the sunrise, a tear came to his eye. He shook it off and carried on running.

Sonic was briefed for their next mission later that morning. A very uptight looking hedgehog presided.

"We suspect there is a large long term base being set up in one of the outer villages. We need you to infiltrate and explore it, and to try and destroy the base if possible."

"But sir," a very edgy Shadow interrupted. "Those villages are at the edge of radio range, and if we need support, it'll take hours to get there! It's suicide!"

"That's why there are three teams on the job. Sonic's team will lead, provided Knuckles is up to the task,"

"He's trying to cope," Sonic answered.

"Shadow's and Jet's teams will be in support, and if things get really messy, dig in and call back for help. If it gets too bad, Jet will have your extraction chopper. And watch out, this is also mercenary country. If Robotnik has hired the Chaotix you're as good as dead if anything goes wrong."

Sonic caught up with Knuckles when he was sitting at the top of a hill with a small cliff which he hung his legs over. It overlooked the whole forest. That's not exactly hard, considering it covers all of sixteen square miles. He sat down next to him.

"This was our favourite view." Knuckles said longingly. He looked at Sonic. "This was where we first… we… we lost our virginity."

"I know you miss Julie, but…" he paused awkwardly. "…but… we all have to move on in life, people come and go…" Knuckles seemed slightly upset at this. "I was four when my dad died. I was devastated. I just couldn't take it. But I had to move on… we can't live in the past all the time." Knuckles thought a while.

"You're right. I have to get over it." He got up and walked away. Sonic gazed out over the forest. It was quite a view. He remembered when he was 16, Amy had an obsession with him, but then the hormones kicked in and she got embarrassed talking to him. About the same time, he suddenly matured and found himself admiring her and her developing body. A couple of years later and they were both quietly in love with each other, but were both too embarrassed to say anything. It came close when Sonic went on his first mission when he was 18, but it stopped at a hug and a 'good luck' from the 14-year-old Amy. It also happened again when she went on her first mission, on the same team as Sonic. He thought… no, should I? Would I?

Could I?

No. Maybe… no. Or would she… no, she… maybe she would… naah.

He was about to get up when Amy arrived.

"Sonic! I've been looking all over for you."

"Amy… eh, what a surprise…" She sat down beside him.

"Some view, eh?"

"Yeah,"

"D'you… wait, no…" She started.

"What?"

"I was thinking… well, kind of… no…"

"Was it… well, um…"

Both of them continued to converse in fits and starts, not actually getting anywhere. They paused.

He lifted his hand to put it somewhere more comfortable, and it landed on Amy's by accident.

"Oh, sorry I…"

"No, it was my…

"Wait…" Sonic took Amy by the shoulders. "There's been something I've been meaning to tell you for a long time…"

"Well it'll have to wait a little longer!" Knuckles called from the bottom of the cliff. They looked down. They looked back at each other.

"I'll tell you later."

Tails & Wave were working on a broken air-bike, raised up on a platform.

"Hi, guys!" They heard from below them. Tails looked over the edge. He rolled his eyes to see Chris. He turned back to the table and pulled a small toolbox off the table. It fell off the platform and down to the ground with a crash. "Ow!" It hit Chris square in the head.

"Oh, sorry about that!" Tails turned back to Wave. "Got him!" He whispered with a thumbs-up and a smile. Wave laughed into her arm.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

A long plane flight took them to their destination. They went even further than last time, as mazes of canyons gave way to scrubby desert. A few abandoned buildings dotted the landscape. Tails surveyed every wrecked vehicle and thought about what it was, how long it would take to fix it and how much use it would be. Knuckles slept soundly. Sonic and Amy sat across from each other. Sonic went over to sit next to her.

"About what I was saying earlier…"

"Yeah…"

"Well… I… eh… oh, it just felt right then, and it's kind of awkward now…"

"That's okay… do you want to say it later?"

"Well, I… I just thought I might not get another chance…"

"Don't worry, we'll be fine," She said optimistically. Knuckles raised an eyebrow. He was clearly listening. She shook it off.

"Don't mind him. But anyway, I… just want to say…"

A siren went. Jet, Wave and Storm got up. They grabbed their airboards and prepared to jump.

"Ignore that. Go on,"

"Well… Amy, I… I…" The roaring sound of engines cut him off before he could finish. Both of them looked around in frustration. Jet and his team jumped out of the open back of the plane one by one. A problem with the door closing held him up even longer. They could only watch as Shadow lost his temper with the mechanism and hurt his foot as he kicked it. Rouge sat back and laughed quietly. Tails rolled his eyes and decided to leave him a little longer to figure it out. Knuckles tried his best to stay asleep.

Sonic turned back to his seat and sat in a huff. He waited impatiently for the door to close.

Several minutes later, Tails intervened. He pressed a button and closed the door, much to the black hedgehog's frustration. He sat down next to Rouge, who was in hysterics by now.

Sonic finally got round to saying what he meant to say.

"Amy… I… jeez, this sounds weird after we had to wait so long… Amy, I…" as if contriving to stop him from saying it, the siren went off again. The plane began to go into a gentle dive. Everyone checked their equipment. Amy had the sword, hammer and quarterstaff, as well as a small chain of throwing daggers. Sonic had his trusty pistol, accompanied by four grenades this time. Tails went through all six of his guns. He never used them all, but he liked the choice. Shadow put his hand on his assault rifle and then his home-made machete. Rouge checked the whip and pistol in her belt and the dagger she kept in one of her brown leather boots.

The plane lowered itself until the wheels were touching the ground, but it kept its speed. Shadow and Rouge got into a small buggy. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy got into a bigger four-person vehicle. Sonic looked over at Shadow's somewhat miniature transport, and looked away to hide his laughter. Shadow promptly extended his middle finger in Sonic's direction. The doors that had beaten Shadow dropped again. The end scraped against the dusty ground. The two vehicles revved engines as passengers fastened seatbelts. On the flash of a green light, both vehicles accelerated off the back of the plane. As the wheels hit the ground, they found themselves going backwards from the momentum of the plane. They slammed into reverse as they tried to slow down. Brakes held to the floor, the vehicles slowly came to a stop as the plane flew away. It double backed and headed back to the base. It was mid evening. The sun was low in the sky and the shadows were long, but it was still quite light. Tails got out to inspect the front right wheel, which was now spewing forth smoke. He went back for the fire extinguisher.

"Shit…"

"What's the problem?"

"The brake disc has completely burnt out. It's actually worn away, like, it's not there,"

"Where is it, then?"

"Scattered over a few miles that way," He pointed in the direction they had just come from.

"Can we still use the car?"

"Yeah, but it'll be hell to drive. It'll steer left every time you brake."

"Can you fix it?"

"Given about five minutes, yeah."

"How about with help?"

"Depending on the amount and quality, maybe as quick as ten seconds," Sonic was surprised. He immediately leapt out and got the jack from the boot. Knuckles prepared to lift. Amy sorted through tools. Shadow and Rouge attended to their own buggy.

Tails directed the jacking, which took five seconds. Tails grabbed the drill from Amy and started on taking the wheel off. Four seconds later, he started taking off the remains of the brake disc. He threw it away, and reached for a fresh one. Sonic got the hint three seconds later. Another three and Tails screwed the new brakes on, and screwed the wheel back on. He pulled the jack away and pressed a button on his jacket. He looked at where he had pressed.

"20.78. Not bad,"

"Say what?" Knuckles was thoroughly confused.

"I time how long it takes me to fix things. All the mechanics do it. It's a kind of quality control thing." Tails replied. Knuckles was no more enlightened than before.

"You lost me at '20'."

"Ah, forget it…" Tails got back into the driving seat. Everyone else got back into their passenger seats. He brought the jeep round to Shadow's buggy.

"Need a hand?" Sonic said out the side.

"No, just checking everything still works,"

"Well? Does it?"

"Yeah,"

"Then get going!"


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Tails pulled the SUV over at the edge of a crop of rocks. The rocks gave way to a maze of tunnels and canyons. Somewhere, deep in this maze of caverns, was the village they sought. Sonic leant out of the side.

"We have to wait for Jet."

"Stupid bird." Shadow replied as he stopped the buggy next to them.

"Somebody talking about me?" Jet stood behind Shadow, who was facing away from him. Shadow turned around and nearly fell out of his seat. Storm smiled malignantly.

"Jesus… don't fricking do that!"

"What was this about 'Stupid Bird'?"

"Eh, what of it? I mean… it was a joke, ah… I…"

"Ladies, ladies, please…" Knuckles jumped out in a bid to calm them down. "There are more important things to be doing now than sudden appearances and behind-your-back insults…" Tails put his head in his hands. Oh, here we go…

Rouge hopped up to get a better look.

"As badly as he phrased it, Knuckles is right. We've got work to do."

Shadow and Jet exchanged icy looks and turned to walk away. Shadow forgot he was still wearing his seatbelt and fell sideways. Storm started giggling.

Shadow and Rouge took the buggy down one tunnel. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy took the second on foot. Jet, Wave and Storm took the third with their airboards. They had no idea where the tunnels led, or how long it would take them to get there.

Shadow had a tricky drive in a narrow, rocky tunnel lit by holes in the sides. The sandy ground provided little grip, so most of his driving was actually sliding. The experience was even more hair-raising for Rouge, who had the added variable of not being able to see where she was going. She could jump off and leave Shadow to his own devices, but she would be stuck there as the tunnel was immensely long. The tunnel looked like it used to be a pipe for a power station or something. They were basically on a rollercoaster.

Sonic's team had to descend a steep cave. Tails used to be able to fly by spinning his two tails, but when he was 13, his body weight caught up and flying slowly became more difficult. By the time he was 15, he could only glide, and by the time he was 17, he might as well have been flapping his arms. He pulled a grapple gun from his pack. He shot it at the ceiling and let the body fall away to the ground. It wasn't actually that big a drop, but it was very rocky at the end. At the bottom however, it was a clear view right to the village.

The tunnel Jet took surfaced a few hundred metres down the line. A few minutes fly took him to the rim of the crater in which the village was situated. They hopped off their boards and proned to stay hidden. He took the radio from his belt.

"Try and find us,"

"Why?" The response crackled over the radio.

"We're not where you'd expect."

He watched Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy emerge from the cavern below. They looked around for a few minutes, hoping to spot the green hawk.

"Look up," He eventually said into the radio. Tails was the first to look up. Jet waved. Tails pointed them out to the others.

"So where's Shadow?"

A third voice said over the radio:

"Stay in cover! Stay away from any tunnel exits!"

"Um… why?"

"Just do it!"

A rumbling sound was heard. Sonic's team quickly ducked behind the cave the came from. Amy poked her nose around the side. She was just in time to see Shadow's buggy speeding out of a tunnel. It swerved into the tunnel Sonic had emerged from, and Amy could see a concerned-looking Rouge hanging on to the buggy for dear life. Shadow brought it to a stop a few metres down the tunnel. Rouge immediately got off and threw up behind a rock. Shadow stumbled out, also nauseous.

"Eh… are you okay, Rouge?" Knuckles looked mildly concerned.

"Super, thanks for asking!" She responded, oozing sarcasm.

"Is this the right village?" Sonic asked.

"It's a village, we're in the middle of nowhere, that fits the bill!" Shadow managed as he propped himself up against a wall.

"There's no guards," Amy pointed out.

"Maybe the base is underground," Tails suggested.

"Possible,"

"Mis…n s…port t… away t…m… M…sion su…rt to aw… te…"

"Cream? Cream, is that you?" Amy yelled at the radio which she had snatched from Sonic.

"I c… h…r you… y…'re brea…ng ...p!"

"Amy! I have an idea! Given about five minutes, I could tune up the radio to receive the signal better and send out a stronger signal."

"Can we help this time?"

"Are you trained in electronic engineering? Thought not."

Amy scowled at Tails. He proceeded to take the radio apart. "That shouldn't be there… that shouldn't be like that… who built this thing? Honestly!"

Amy turned back to Sonic and stood beside him.

"So what was it you wanted to say?"

"Ah… I think it would be best left until we got back."

"Uh-huh." He thought. Was he wasting his time? Was it meant to be?

He shook the thoughts off and concentrated on the mission.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

They checked each hut one by one. Most were empty apart from a few Spartan furnishings. In a couple, a few scared inhabitants cowered in the corner, frightened by the great noise.

But one hut had different contents. Shadow kicked down the door. It took a considerable effort to break it down, as it turned out it was a metal door. The insides were also metal – definitely the base. There was a circular chamber in the centre of the room. A lift by the looks of it. He pressed some buttons in the hope of opening it. An irate beep. Dammit, if only Tails wasn't playing with the radio. He got frustrated and hit the panel. It smashed. Oops. Rouge prised his hand out of the hole. She pushed a button higher up on the lift. The doors opened. Shadow got even more frustrated. He put his fist through a table. Rouge couldn't help but laugh.

Sonic entered the room.

"This way!" He called.

"Just a sec!" Tails called back. "Just need to tighten a few screws… and… there!" He hurried to the lift. Everyone was getting inside, and Shadow even brought a small piece of table with him. He turned it the radio on as the doors closed, careful not to catch either of his tails in them. There was just static.

"Aagh, Tails, you broke it!"

"Wait, let me change the bandwidth…" He pressed a button.

"C…n y… he…r m… now?" Cream's voice was still a broken mess of static.

"Now adjust the frequency…" He pushed a slider.

"How about now?" Her voice was crystal clear.

"Perfect, Cream," Amy responded.

"Right. Where are you now?"

"Going down an elevator in the middle of the village."

"Who found it?"

"Shadow,"

"That explains it."

"Explains what?" Shadow turned to the radio, now very concerned.

"Get ready to kill things."

"All I needed to hear." Shadow pulled out his weapons. He nearly cut everyone with the way he took out his machete. Everyone else took out their weapons in a safer manner. Knuckles punched his fists against each other.

The doors opened. A robot turned to look. It performed a double take as no less than seven guns and three mêlée weapons now pointed out of the elevator door, and sounded a very loud alarm. Everybody poured out of the lift. Those with guns opened fire. Amy, Knuckles and Storm stayed in cover and made their way towards the gathering robots. The pile of scrap metal grew ever larger as round after round was pumped into the defence bots. Sonic, Rouge and Jet stashed their pistols and started to advance. Tails, Shadow and Wave kept shooting. As sentry robots were slowly replaced with human armoured guards, Amy jumped out of her cover and stuck her sword in someone's neck with a gush of blood. It stained her trousers. She swung her hammer into the head of a robot. Storm tackled two guards to the ground and proceeded to pummel anyone he could grab senseless. Knuckles confronted a group of soldiers. He gestured to them, with a raised eyebrow and a flick of the hand, to 'bring it on'. Each one attacked him in turn. He dealt with each one nonchalantly. The last one fired his gun at him. It hit him on his lower left chest, in his bullet-proof coat. He spun, but didn't fall over. He used the spin to land a punch to the side of the last soldier's face, who promptly fell to the ground.

Rouge had some fun playing with a couple of soldiers with her whip, until Amy threw a couple of daggers into their necks, as if saying 'Stop messing around'. Rouge snapped her whip sideways and flicked a soldier in the face who was about to attack Amy, as if saying 'You look at what you're doing'.

Jet hopped on to his airboard and began shooting from the air. Sonic pressed a button on his gun and a blade popped out of the handle. Fortunately he was holding the barrel. He stabbed an advancing soldier in the stomach and used his gun to take out some more. The magazine ran out and Sonic dropped him.

Shadow decided to save some ammunition for later and burst forth with his machete. He hacked a few limbs off and stabbed someone in the chest. He surged forth and took out everyone he could.

"He might be a little dim when it comes to buttons, but he sure is a psycho in combat," Wave said between shots.

"What?" Tails replied as he carried on shooting.

As he backed up against the far wall, three massive robots descended from the ceiling. These were much bigger combat robots. Shadow could read the serial number on the back: SIPR 6020 series. And to think that they got bigger?

He jumped on the back of one of them. He drove the machete deep into its back. Using it as a foothold, he took out his gun and peppered bullets into the eyes of the other two. The other two turned to him and pointed their machine guns at him. He pulled the machete out of the robots back and jumped up on its head just in time to avoid getting shot. He dropped down in front and the robot got shot in the head by the other two. He ran forward and ducked, hoping for Tails to do what he hoped he would do. A whoosh passing above him followed by a deafening explosion relieved him. He looked up to see Tails holding a smoking rocket launcher.

"I can't hear a damn thing!" Tails shouted to himself and anyone who would listen.

After cleaning up a bit, retrieving thrown daggers and discarded weapons and regaining hearing, they discussed their next move.

"They're probably trenched up by now." Shadow took the pessimistic view.

"Would it be worth blowing the place up now?" Tails said excitedly.

"There could be prisoners," Amy still had a slight tinge of blood on her face.

"They would all have been killed or roboticised by now." Cream said over the radio.

"And all the treasure is kept in Robotropolis," Rouge added.

"No sign of finding the Master Emerald then?" Knuckles inquired.

"So just blow it?" Wave asked hopefully.

An arriving troop of soldiers answered the question for them.

"Okay, blow it!" Sonic said as he ran for cover. Tails and Wave hi-fived and ran for cover with everyone else.

They searched through their various explosives while everyone kept the besieging force at bay using Tails' many guns.

"You need to hold here while we get the buggy. Here's all the ammo…" Tails emptied the pack of its many clips and magazines. "…we need the bag for the explosives." At that, Tails and Wave jumped into the elevator.

A few tense minutes later, a revving was heard from the elevator. The doors opened and the buggy lurched forth.

"GO!" Tails screamed at the others. He slammed his foot to the floor again as the others rushed back into the lift. He ran down any soldiers he could, and Wave shot some more from the back. Speeding away, they continued to the centre of the complex. As it turns out, they were just above it, but they had to take the long way round. The centre was a large room with a supercomputer. It had a lot of scientists and guards wandering around, even with all the commotion upstairs. Staying on a tight course, he drove the buggy down the spiralling walkways at the circumference. Occupants struggled to get out of the way. Once he reached the bottom, he pushed a button, and the bomb fell out of the buggy's left side. Wave covered Tails as he set the last few timers.

"Two minutes, that should give us just enough time to get out." He said as he accelerated up the spiral walkway.

"Cutting a little tight, don't you think?" Wave said as she polished off the remaining occupants of the room.

"Nah, we'll be fine…"

Racing back to the lift, Wave pressed the button as Tails slammed the front of the buggy against the inside of the lift. It escalated slowly. As it reached the top, they could hear the distant rumble of the bomb going off. The doors opened slowly. As soon as they were wide enough to let the buggy through, Tails slammed down on the accelerator. As they speeded out of the hut, the explosion reached the elevator. A shot of flames followed them as they drove away. Wave, sitting in the back, could feel the heat blasting on her face as it came millimetres from reaching them. Tails slid the buggy to a stop next to an awestruck Sonic.

"Now, who needs to jump away from explosions?"


	7. Chapter 7

Me: Woohoo! Updates and Writer's comments for teh win. I sure hope people are reading this... also, it's about to get steamy.

--

Chapter 7

Amy stood in the shower. It was a spacious shower at that; it was more of a car wash. She always took a long time in the shower after a mission, as blood took a long time to come out. She turned off the tap. A sudden wave of cold shook over her without the hot water, causing her quills to prick up. She reached for her towel, hung over the side of the wall. It wasn't there. She heard the door open. Shit.

She looked over the top. It was Sonic.

"Uh… Sonic? Could you get the towel? It fell off…"

"Yeah, sure…" He came over, picked it up and threw it over the top.

"Thanks," She put the towel on around her chest. It was a little small, but it did the job sufficiently. She walked out in front of Sonic. He was fully dressed – he probably just came in to go to the toilet. He was looking at her intently. "Go ahead, look."

"No… no, it's not that."

"What?"

"I never got a chance to tell you when I meant to, yesterday… Amy, I…"

"No… Sonic… do you… no… wait… go on…"

"Amy, I… I love you."

The room fell silent. He didn't know what to expect. It was something of a turnaround, as for so many years all Amy could think about was Sonic and wedding bells. Oh, and that damned inflatable hammer. He thought it was a little strange aswell, as he had no trouble killing an anonymous guard, but it took him weeks of building confidence to tell Amy how he felt. Would she reject it? Would she slap him?

Was she a lesbian?

He shook the thought off. Random nonsense.

"Sonic, I… I never thought you'd… I…" She threw herself at him and hugged him. She pulled her head back a few seconds later and kissed him. She pushed the slightly surprised Sonic to the wall. Sliding against the moist tiled wall, they slowly dropped to the floor. She pulled his jacket and t-shirt off. She pulled the towel away from herself. He stared. He pushed her forward and dispensed of his pants.

He woke up to a hard, wet floor. It was uncomfortable, even if the water was slightly warm from the sunlight shining in from the window. He looked down. Amy was sleeping happily in his arm. A towel was draped over them. His clothes were strewn around the room. Damn. Clothes are always cold when they're wet.

Three hard bangs on the door. They both looked at it. In their lusty daze, they must have locked the door.

"Open up in there!" It was Knuckles. "I need to pee!"

Rouge pored over a map in a garage.

"Latest treasure info?" Shadow walked in.

"Go do strange things to yourself." She said bluntly. He took a can from the fridge. He closed it. As he turned, it turned out it wasn't completely closed. He pushed it again. It opened again. He growled. "Sometimes I wonder how you made captain." Rouge said as she looked over her shoulder at Shadow. He pushed it again. This time it stayed closed. As he left, she called back: "It's open again."

"Go do strange things to yourself." He called back, not turning.

Big sat on his chair, as he usually did. He liked to sit in the shade, eyes closed, cold drink next to him, and think, or just sleep. He, as usual, had his feet up on a box. Nobody bothered him, which was just fine. Occasionally, a young person would ask him why he wasn't out fighting. He was, as his name suggested, larger than average. He would simply say he didn't like fighting. He had an extraordinary patience with just about everything. Except Chris Thorndyke. God, would the kid just keep to himself? I mean, being friendly is fine, but that doesn't mean you have try and extend every greeting into a full blown conversation.

"Hi Big!" Oh, speak of the devil. He closed his eyes tighter and hoped he would go away. "Nice day, isn't it?" Damn. No such luck.

"Is that a unicorn?" He pointed somewhere in the distance. As Chris looked away, he quickly scrawled a note saying "Kick Me" and put a piece of tape on it. I always knew these things would come in handy. He stuck it very lightly on Chris' back. He didn't notice. "Oh. Sorry. False alarm." He said as he lay back in his chair.

"Oh well. See you later!" He said as he turned to walk away.

"Aack. Away with you." He smiled as he relished the resulting mayhem.

"Ow!" He heard in the distance. His smile changed to a wide grin.

--

Me: What did I say? Steamy!

Knux: They still haven't let me in! I NEED TO PEE!


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A bit of a side mission. A bit. No fucking shit Sherlock. This wasn't just a bit of a side mission. It was so out of the way that somebody could nuke the base and we wouldn't know until their evac chopper was an hour late and didn't show any signs of showing up. A bit. At least phrase it accurately!

Sonic's and Shadow's team were left at the beach, miles from anywhere. The mission was almost pointless. Investigate disturbances in the area. So? This far away it's not going to affect anyone!

Tails kicked back and lay in the sun.

"Call me when the chopper gets here,"

"Come on, you lazy bastard," Knuckles grabbed him by the back of the neck of his jacket and dragged him along. He dumped his pack on him.

About midday they stopped.

"Is this a mission or a picnic?"

"We've been walking for two hours and there's no sign of anything."

"I can see round the rest of the bay. Nothing." They stopped, seeing no point in continuing. Knuckles started searching through Tails' pack.

"Hey! Hey! What the hell are you doing?"

"You did pack food, right?"

"Nobody said anything to me about food," Awkward silence.

"Did anybody bring any food?"

"Um… no…" Knuckles punched the ground as he heard this.

"I think that's the least of our problems right now…" Sonic pointed at the SUV speeding towards them. He stayed out just long enough to make out the number plate. It read: CH40TIX. Crap.

He ducked in the bushes and called out for everyone to hide. Amy was a bit late on this. He saw the SUV come to a stop where they were. The window rolled down. The barrel of a gun poked out. It fired. Amy turned to look. Still only halfway through the bush, she seemed like an easy target. Because she turned, the bullet hit her in the shoulder. She fell through the bush and landed next to Sonic. The gun fired a few more shots. They slammed into the trees behind them. The gun disappeared. They could hear a grumbled message from the vehicle.

"Espio, turn it round. Go through the bush."

As he heard this, Sonic ran backwards into the dense rainforest behind them. He helped Amy with him. The rest quickly followed. Intense revving followed them. A crack and then a crash confirmed their fears. Another sent them running again.

Tails had an idea. He took a grenade from Sonic's belt. He pulled the pin out and threw it at the base of a tree to their left.

"Turn right!" He called out. The grenade went off, causing the tree to collapse. Luckily, it fell just the way he intended it to. It crashed on to the front of the car. Through the smashed windscreen, they could see Vector having a tantrum. He picked up his gun and fired a few shots. Tails and Shadow pulled out their guns and fired to allow the others time to get away. They followed a few seconds later.

"Amy, are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, just patch this up." She indicated the bullet wound on her shoulder.

"Tails, tell me you packed a first aid kit,"

"Duh," he pulled out the box and tossed it to Sonic.

"Daagh!"

"It's okay, I'm just getting the bullet out," He pulled out a small piece of bloodied metal with a small knife. He threw the bullet away, cleaned the knife and put it back in the box. He pulled out the bandages. He noticed a tear in Amy's eye. He put his arm around her.

Tails examined a strange ball of light in the distance. Knuckles walked up to him.

"What are you looking at?"

"There's a weird light over there."

"What is it?"

"I don't know." Knuckles walked over to check it out. "Hey! What are you doing?" Tails waited. Realising this was pointless, he changed his tack. "Hey! Wait up!"

Rouge kicked the ground. A small shard popped out. She bent down to inspect it. It had a green tinge, and appeared to be a shard of gemstone. It glowed slightly.

"It's somewhere around here."

"What is?" Shadow asked.

"The master emerald." She deliberately waited until Knuckles was out of earshot.

"What?"

"It wasn't destroyed, it was just shattered." She picked up the shard. "This is a piece of it. The rest of it must be somewhere around here."

"What like this?" Shadow picked a slightly bigger piece out of the ground.

"Hmm. The bigger the pieces, the closer the rest of it must be…" She set off, randomly digging and kicking at the ground, occasionally picking up a shard of emerald.

"Dammit, this would be so much easier if we had a Chaos emerald!" Shadow set off after her.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: Hyper update speed! Also, this is the limit of normality as far as the story goes. Things get logarithmically weirder from here on in.

--

Chapter 9

As they approached the light source, it faded away.

"What happened to it?" Tails asked to anyone who would listen.

"Hey look over there!" Knuckles pointed into a cave.

"And there!" Tails pointed down into a small valley clearing.

"Okay, I'll look in the cave, you check out down there."

He poked his nose into the cave. He could hear the faint sounds of struggling.

"Hello?"

"Help!" He heard from the cave.

"Wait there!" He called down. He ran as fast as he could.

Tails pursued the faint light into a grassy clearing between two hills. The light dissipated.

"What the… what the hell?" As he looked around, the light started gathering again. Tails stepped back. It grew steadily brighter until it was brighter than the sunlight. He shielded his eyes. A rushing noise grew. Wind started to blow. He was pushed back to one of the hills by the wind. He was knocked over after a few minutes. He looked up and saw three silhouettes.

Shadow called out:

"Over here!" Rouge ran over, flying over a small bunch of rocks. "There's a pile of pieces here."

"And the trail leads down into that cave…" She pointed down at a steeply descending cavern. She immediately glided down into it. Shadow rolled his eyes and reluctantly followed.

Knuckles jumped over a couple of rocks. Sliding to a stop in a small cavern, he saw someone stuck with their leg caught between a boulder and the cave wall. She was an echidna with a slightly orange hue, wearing a green & white dress that appeared to be tribal and had a broken gold headband with a blue gemstone in it. She was a bit roughed up.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, except my leg…"

"Let me get that…" He pushed the boulder out of the way. It took all his strength, but it moved easy enough.

"Thanks," She got up and hugged him. He was a little surprised, but she was understandably grateful. "I'm Tikal," Knuckles was surprised by the young girl's openness, but he took it in his stride.

"Hmm. I'm Knuckles." She held his hand. He looked at her, not in disgust, but in a friendly way. He didn't know why, but he felt a warmth in her that he had not felt for a while.

Rouge followed down the cave. Shadow tried desperately to keep up, but to no avail. He gave up and rested before climbing back up to wait for Rouge. Fucking emerald. Why couldn't Knuckles have done a better job protecting it?

Tails got up to see the three figures. The middle one was a light grey hedgehog. To his left was a cat, and to his right, a squirrel. The hedgehog approached him.

"I am Silver. I am from the future. I seek the one known as 'Naugus'."

"Who? Oh, him… nobody knows where he is." Tails replied, without stress.

"I see…" Silver turned around and thought. "Blaze…" He looked back at Tails with a malevolent stare. "Find out what we need to know." The cat tore up to Tails, brandishing a dripping flamethrower.

"All right you little punk…" She got right up into Tails' face and whispered angrily to him. The flamethrower was but an inch from his face. "You're gonna tell us what we need to know or you can kiss goodbye to one of those tails of yours!" A burning drop of fuel fell from the flamethrower on to Tails' cheek. He screamed in pain. "You want a little more of that?"

"Fine, fine… he should be in Robotropolis, but I don't know for sure. Nobody does!"

"Which way?"

Tails pointed in the general direction of the city.

"Diesel! Let's roll!" The three figures hopped into a floating land speeder and flew away with speed.

"So, how did you end up in that cave?" Knuckles and Tikal sat outside the cave, talking away. The sun shone through the green trees, illuminating the grassy patch where they sat.

"I originally came from an ancient time,"

"Huh?" Knuckles was thoroughly confused.

"I was the daughter of chief Pachahamac, thousands of years ago. I befriended the Chaos…"

"Oh yeah, the little creatures that hang around the master emerald,"

"…and I was always around the master emerald. But my father tried to take the master emerald for his own selfish needs. He struck it, and it broke. The rest is a blur, but my soul became trapped in the master emerald and I was stuck in there for thousands of years. When the emerald was shattered, I was released, and because most of the emerald was in that cave, I lived down in that cave."

"For how long?"

"Well… let's see, I was trapped in the emerald when I was twelve, I'm twenty now, eight years. Or, about that. You're the first person I've seen since I was freed from the emerald."

"The emerald is down there?" Knuckles got up and rushed back to the cave entrance.

"Why should it concern you? Are you a treasure hunter?"

"No! Until it was shattered, I was the guardian of the emerald on Angel Island. Since it was stolen and shattered, the island fell into the sea and I've been working with the freedom fighters ever since."

"You mean… my home… it's… gone?" Knuckles sat down next to Tikal and put his arm around her to try and comfort her.

"There, there… it was my home too…"

Tails trudged back to Sonic and Amy, still bandaging the wound. The burn was very visible.

"Ouch, Tails! What happened to you?"

"Well, it's a long story…"


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Knuckles showed Tikal to his room. She rushed in playfully. She picked up things here and there to see what they did. She pushed a button on the TV and fell back on to the bed with surprise when the screen flickered into life.

"Wha… is that person stuck in that box?"

"No…" Knuckles sat down beside her. "It's just a picture… that moves… and makes sound…" Tikal was still mystified. "You're in the future, baby! Everything's different!"

"Everything?" She said with a knowing smile on her face. She jumped on Knuckles and they landed on the bed, lying down. She kissed him. She threw away her headband. Knuckles threw away his jacket as best as he could with Tikal on top of him.

They lay there, half asleep in the bed. Tikal lifted herself up to talk.

"Not so different after all, then?" She said. Knuckles smiled. She lay back down. "Did you ever have a Soultouch?" She asked, clearly out of curiosity. Knuckles was slow to answer.

"Once…"

"What happened to her?"

"She was killed in action."

"Oh god… that's so sad…" She said with genuine sympathy. "When was it?"

"Two weeks ago." He replied plainly. He was strong when talking about it, and didn't show any signs of breaking down. Tikal waited before speaking again. She held herself closer to him.

"Do you believe that people can find a new one?" She asked innocently. Knuckles looked down at her.

"I think I already have," He smiled.

Shadow was in the gym practising his fighting. He pounded at a red punch bag, slowly battering it off its fittings. With a particularly vigorous punch, it flew off the hinges and landed a few metres away on the ground, after hitting Amy in the back of the head while she hit a target with a wooden practice sword.

"Watch where you're breaking that thing!" She called out. This was by no means the first time. But Shadow was in such a frenzy that he didn't take any notice. He continued pummelling the punch bag into the ground, literally knocking the stuffing out of it. Chris walked up in front of him.

"Hi Shadow!" Amy rolled her eyes, but continued to watch. Shadow looked up, having just taken a bite out of the punch bag. He spit it out and used Chris as a new punch bag. Amy watched and struggled to hide her laughter as he beat the snot out of Chris. A few minutes later, Shadow was distracted by another punch bag and started to hit that. Chris fell to the ground unconscious.

Sonic couldn't get his head around Tails' story. Tails tried, in vain, to explain it.

"So… some weirdoes from the future came down and asked where Ixus Naugus is?"

"Yeah,"

"What did they do then?"

"They just flew off."

"Weird,"

"And when they were grilling me they burnt be on the face." He pointed at the still singed fur and flesh on his left cheek.

"Yeah, whatever." Tails glared at Sonic as he walked away.

Rouge couldn't believe she had found all this. It was in a few million pieces, but most of it was here. She carted the trailer into an empty warehouse. It was hard work, but it was worth it. She pulled the off it. There it was – it was fractured and splintered, but the master emerald and its fragments were here. She picked up pieces and attempted to stick them back on. They fell off straight away.

"Don't tell me I need the Chaos emeralds," She sighed.

Sonic met Amy about to walk into the bathroom. She was just wearing towel.

"Oh, sorry, were you about to…"

"No, if you need to go then go before I have a shower,"

"Is your arm okay? He nodded towards the bandage on her left shoulder.

"It's fine, it's probably best if I wash it."

"Let me take a look at it," They both went in to the bathroom.

She pulled the bandage off.

"It's healing,"

"Could you… keep an eye on me while I'm in the shower?"

"What, like, with the door open?" Sonic was slightly surprised.

"I mean… in the shower," Amy was slightly nervous saying this. Sonic raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, sure." Amy was relieved.

In the shower, Sonic kept a close eye on Amy as she washed, particularly when she used shower gel around the wound.

"Hold me…" She said under her breath with her eyes closed and her arms held close to her. Sonic gladly obliged. She urged him to continue. He took the initiative and pushed her up against the wall.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Sonic ran through the workshop in a hurry.

"Tails? Tails? We're leaving in ten minutes!"

"Just a second!" The young fox called from behind a damaged tank. He hopped over it, grabbing a few guns and stuffing them into his pack as he went.

"Hurry up!"

"Yeah, yeah…"

Sonic ran the whole way to the helipad. Tails arrived a few minutes later and caught his breath as he got in.

"Everyone got everything?" Sonic asked. Tails checked through his pack for all the various firearms and gadgets.

"Got my guns right here!" Knuckles said as he punched his fist against his palm.

"Let's see… roll call… one, two, three… yep! Got everything." Amy said as she counted the quarterstaff, sword and hammer stashed on her back. Rouge tightened her whip and reloaded her pistol. She pulled the dagger out of her boot, tossed in the air and slipped it back in. Shadow sharpened his machete against the side of the chopper while he checked his rifle.

"Hey! Don't do that!" Jet called back from the cockpit as he checked his pistol. Wave twirled her two machine pistols on her fingers. Storm punched something, as usual.

Knuckles kissed Tikal before he got on the chopper. The chopper rose high above the tree line.

"Bye, guys!" Chris called out from the helipad. Tails pulled an empty bottle from his pack.

"I've been saving this for just such an occasion." He dropped the bottle out the side.

"Aagh!"

"All right! Right in the forehead!" Sonic and Tails hi-fived.

They left, heading out further than they had ever gone before. They were heading for Robotropolis.

Two hours later and their sunrise takeoff had matured into a mid-morning landing. They were at the extremity of Robotropolis. This was the boundary where the natural landscape ended and the artificial one began. Anywhere within fifteen miles of the city was a roboticised environment, mostly metal surfaces and urban wasteland. Vast networks of storm drains, service tunnels and pipelines extended underground to the city. This was the easiest way in as above the ground was heavily patrolled. The only resistance would be a few hubs of Ixus Naugus' human guards.

Heavy pollution blanketed the sky. Even though it was only ten in the morning, it was dark.

"Okay, we'll take the straight centre route through the service tunnels. Jet, you and your team take those storm drains. If there's a flash flood, the airboards should come in handy escaping it. Shadow, you take the flank service tunnels. Once we get to the other side, we'll radio you to meet up."

A pipe of power lines led into a small hub. It was devoid of sentries and looked like it had been for a while. Sonic dropped down to check the pipe across the way.

"It splits up," He called back.

"How many?"

"Two. They pretty much go the same way, but they're separate."

"Should we split up?" Amy asked with concern, dropping down to join Sonic.

"Good idea. We'll go that way, and Tails & Knuckles can go that way."

"Wait, how do we have any guarantee that you won't just go off and have sex somewhere?" Tails complained.

"Yeah, eh, what he said!" Knuckles added.

"You've got a point."

"Randy bastard…" Amy muttered under her breath.

"I'll go with Tails, Knuckles can go with Amy." Knuckles hastened to the bend on the pipe.

"Come on!"

"Sonic, wait," Amy took Sonic by the shoulders. Sonic grabbed her elbows. They kissed. Tails rolled his eyes.

"Okay, Casanova, let's go already!"

They broke a few seconds later. A quick hug and they went their respective ways. Tails tossed a radio to Knuckles.

Sailing along in a fairly empty sewer, Jet kept his eyes peeled for anything suspicious. Twenty minutes with nothing? Something must be wrong. Suddenly the pipe came to an end. The three of them flew out over what must have been a small fortress. Jet stared in horror as dozens of alarmed guards looked up and pointed guns at them. He tried to land behind a couple of barrels for cover. Wave landed on a car. The front of her board smashed the windscreen. She hopped behind it to duck from incoming fire. Storm fell down the chasm between the platform and the walls as the bottom of his board was peppered with bullets. He was lucky enough to grab on to the floor below, avoiding a very long fall. His board fell away towards the black abyss.

Shadow peered round the edge of the wall. Two guards alone. Easy pickings. Rouge stood at the opposite wall. If this was a few years ago, she would have lit a cigarette, but she gave up with the idea that if anything was going to kill her, it would be one of Eggman's robots.

"Looking at your lunch?" She said nonchalantly to Shadow. Shadow glared at her and shushed her. He turned back to the guards. Didn't hear anything. Perfect.

He lunged out at the far one. He slid his machete easily into his neck at an angle as he attempted to stand on his shoulder. As he pulled it away, the head rolled down a hole. The body collapsed. He turned to the other, pointing his gun at him.

"Do you feel lucky, punk? Well? Do you?" The guard turned to flee. Just after he started running, he fell into a pit. Shadow smiled as the guard defeated himself.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

"Amy?" The voice crackled over the radio.

"Cream? Is that you?" She said into it, grabbing it off Knuckles.

"Yeah. I just wanted to tell you to be careful, you might be headed for a base… what's that?" Back at the base, she turned away from her microphone. She looked at someone else's screen. "What's that thing headed towards us?"

"I don't know, it's not one of ours…"

She stared at the screen for a few seconds.

"Shit."

"What?"

"It's a missile,"

"WHAT?!?" The other person turned and fled.

"Coward." Cream turned back to her microphone. "We're having a bit of trouble down our end, there's a missile headed straight for us." Amy was shocked to hear this.

"Get out of there! Get out of there now!"

"I'm going, I'm going… what… shit!"

"Cream? Cream? Are you okay?" Amy heard a crash and an explosion over the radio, and then just static. She sat down on the ground and collapsed her head into her arms. She started sobbing uncontrollably. Knuckles didn't know how to handle this. In his head, he said: This is going to be a long day…

Sonic and Tails hid behind a couple of barriers. They did so quickly as they heard someone coming. Sonic poked an eye round the corner. A lone guard. Wait, there's somebody else. Three figures walked up out of the dark. The guard pointed his gun at them. The gun bent out of shape before his eyes, and a gloved hand came out and pulled it away. The guard fell backwards. A cat came forwards with a flamethrower that looked ready to explode because it was so full. She stomped one booted foot on the unfortunate soldier's neck. She growled through her teeth:

"Which way to Naugus?"

"I… I don't know…" He responded in a panic.

"Are you familiar with thermite?" She demonstrated by firing the flamethrower off at a barrel. A couple of seconds later it was reduced to a pile of molten metal. "Now, do you want that to be your skull?"

"Eh… I think he's that way but I'm not sure…"

"God, nobody's sure of anything around here…" A squirrel came forward. He looked quite young, about the same age as Tails. Come to think of it both he and the cat did.

"Leave him. He's just another anonymous guard. They probably have no better idea than we do." A voice called from the shadows.

"Yeah." The cat kicked him in the head and left him unconscious.

"These are those weirdoes I was talking about." Tails whispered to Sonic.

A black blur flew in from behind them. After some audible struggling, it fell forward. Shadow had attacked another random. His victim this time was a light grey hedgehog, silver even. Holding his machete up in the air, he stopped to see a flamethrower and another bizarre looking firearm pointed at him. Oops.

"Wait, wait, wait." Sonic ventured forth to try and defuse the situation. Tails smacked his hand on his head. "This is my deranged friend Shadow who has a nasty habit of beating the crap out of whatever he can get his hands on. Please, don't mind him, he was just expecting some robots or guards or something. You say you're looking for Naugus?"

"Slow down… first, who the hell are you?"

"Oh, sorry. I'm Sonic, and…" He turned back to Tails. He motioned him to come forward. Tails did so wearily. "Tails here you already know."

Rouge walked forward having just watched the whole episode.

"Is this Sonic the negotiator?"

"…and this is Rouge."

"How many of you are there around here?" The hedgehog said with surprise and concern.

"If everything's gone to plan, one, two… nine."

"Nine?"

"Nine. Now I believe you owe us the pleasure of an introduction?"

"Uh-huh. I am Silver, and these are Blaze and Diesel." The hedgehog motioned to the cat and squirrel in turn. "We have come from the future to eliminate Naugus."

"Oh, that's handy, we were trying to do the same thing…" Shadow dusted himself off. "Him and Eggman."

"Who is this… 'Eggman'?"

"Oh, he's the guy who made all this." Sonic indicated the surrounds. "This used to be a forest, I think… something like that."

"We've never heard of him. He must have been defeated somewhere along the line."

"Yay, knowledge of victory…" Tails said with sarcastic enthusiasm.

"We don't know who killed him though."

"Ah."

"What?"

"That leaves a variable."

"Is that bad?"

"Could be. It could be good, but it could be very bad. It varies, that's why it's called a variable."

"Well, duh."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Cream pulled herself out from under the console. It was smashed to pieces. There was no way that it was going to work. She looked around. Everyone else had left. The room was in flames. The door wasn't blocked, which was fortunate. Outside, it had begun to rain. A few buildings had been hit with missiles. Mostly military and political. At least their aim wasn't off. She set off looking for someone. Thank God I chose to wear pants today, because a skirt would have never been able to get past these rocks.

A few minutes later, she saw Tikal wandering aimlessly around, wondering what had happened.

"Hey!" Tikal looked over to see who it was. Cream bounded towards her.

"Are you okay?"

"What happened?" She said in her usual perky demeanour.

"Okay, yes. A few missiles hit the base"

"What's a missile?" She asked innocently. Cream rolled her eyes. God, Knuckles, I mean, fill her in!

"A missile is… it's like a big arrow that explodes when it hits something."

"How big?"

"Really big, now let's go!"

"Somebody say my name?" Big appeared from around the corner. He was holding what looked like a very large baseball bat.

"Uh… should I ask?" She said looking at the bat.

"Oh, this? I ran into a bit of trouble with some soldiers. You should probably take something." Cream flipped a gun out of a holster. Both Big and Tikal stared at it.

"Way ahead of you."

Amy had dried her tears and continued on her way. The pipe seemed to stretch for miles, and there to be no resistance along it. Suddenly they heard a rumbling.

"What's that?" Knuckles sniffed the air.

"Shit. Petrol."

"You mean this is an exhaust pipe?"

"Could be. What I do know is that it's about to get hot in here."

The rumbling got louder and a hot gas started to gush forward from in front of them. Down the straight pipe they could see flames billowing forth. Knuckles punched the pipe wall. The outside was hollow. Peeling away the corrugated iron, there was a platform and some drilling equipment outside. How fortunate. He looked back to check the flames' progress. It was approaching fast. He went to grab Amy, but she had already jumped through the hole. Regrouping, he leapt through himself. He felt the flames soaring past his back as he emerged from the pipe. Amy watched as he fell from the pipe and away from a lick of flame from the ruptured pipe. He landed with a crash on Amy.

Shaking herself off, she looked down at the weight on her chest. Knuckles was groaning, half-conscious, with his face buried in her bosom.

"Take your head out of there before I mount it on my wall."

"What?" He looked up. He looked back down. "Oh, sorry…" He got up hastily.

"Hello?" Amy looked round. It sounded like Jet, but she wasn't sure. Whoever it was, he sounded injured. She got up and came over to look. Sure enough, Jet and Wave were making their way along.

"Where's Storm?"

"We lost him." Wave said with dismay.

"You mean… you got separated?"

"No, he's dead." Jet retorted, a little irately.

"Oh…"

"What happened to your airboards?" Knuckles asked appearing around the corner.

"We lost them aswell. They're somewhere at the bottom of a pit."

"Ah."

Sonic, Shadow and Silver (and in turn, their company) had set off for Naugus' base. He seemed to be in control of Eggman, which was unsurprising. One does not become an evil genius overnight. Something was suspicious.

Up ahead they saw a group of barrels. A small tuft of orange hair stuck out from behind them.

"Blaze, check it out." She promptly obliged. Kicking a barrel aside, she revealed the hiding individual.

"Eggman!" Sonic exclaimed.

"Please… don't… don't kill me… I'm not… I…"

"What do you want?" Shadow tried to get to the point.

"Naugus… he's…" At the word Naugus, Silver's eyes widened. "He's crazy. He ordered his soldiers to terminate my robots… he's taken control…"

"Cut the crap…" Rouge added to Shadow's impatience.

"I need your help."

"Oh, we were already on our way to kill Naugus, but what's to stop us killing you?" Diesel issued bluntly.

"Because… I can help you get in. I know all the defences inside out."

"Or I could just blow your brains out right now." Tails held a shotgun to Eggman's head.

"If you kill me, you'll never get through. There's a wall of soldiers waiting to put a bullet in you, and you'll never kill them all. I know a way round that."

"Hmm…" Sonic thought. "What guarantee do we have that you're not just going to stab us in the back at the worst possible moment?"

"Look at me. I'm reduced to hiding behind a few barrels for protection from Naugus' soldiers. Would someone such as myself stoop that low at will?"

Sonic raised an eyebrow.

"Now that you look at it that way…"


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

"God. What a waste of time." Mighty whinged.

"Look, it was your idea to go along with this in the first place." Espio snapped, equally irate.

"It's not my fault, I thought of this to survive all this."

"What?"

"You know, the war."

"Well suppose the freedom fighters win? What'll happen to the mercs then? Or what if Robotnik stabs us in the back?"

"Look, I did the best I could under the circumstances. It's not ideal but we should survive. Okay?"

"Will you two shut your yaps? You'll give us away!" Vector yelled back at the two squabbling mercenaries.

"Asshole…"

"Shh! Someone's coming!" Vector slipped out a Magnum. Espio and mighty grabbed some weapons. Peering through the ajar door, they saw the intruders: An echidna, a pink hedgehog, a green hawk and a purple swallow. The last two were somewhat roughed up. Vector pushed the barrel of the gun through the door.

Knuckles spotted a glint in the half-light. He glanced over at its source. Then he noticed a second glint behind it, as if one from an eye. His eyes widened as he realised their nature.

"Get down!" He shouted. He grabbed Amy and Wave. Jet was out of his reach, but he ducked aswell. A loud bang. The barrel on the far side jumped a little and fell over. There was a large hole in it. Knuckles looked up to see a frustrated Vector kick the door open and fire a few shots at them as they scattered. Amy pulled out her hammer and leapt from her cover. She smashed Vector's head open with one swipe. Knuckles winced at the spilt brains on the floor. Jet followed Amy into the room. He grabbed Vector's magnum as he went. He put two bullets into the first thing he saw. When he opened his eyes, Mighty sank to his knees and fell over, with two gaping holes in his head. Staring at the gun, he puzzled over its immense power. While he did this, Amy ran into the next room. She pulled out her sword and swung it in. It stopped at the neck of Espio.

"Whoa… it's cool… calm down…"

"And why should I listen to you? You're nothing but a filthy mercenary."

"Hey, do you think I wanted to end up like this?" Espio seemed to take offence to this. "If I had my way, I would have joined you guys a few years ago. I followed Mighty into this."

"Prove it." She pushed the sword a little closer. In a flash, Espio stepped back and hurled a knife. Amy assumed it was heading for her. She sidestepped away, even though it wasn't going her way. The dagger lodged itself in something with a scream. Somebody fell forward. A bat landed on the ground with the knife stuck in his eye, apparently dead.

"That's Blade, he was one of ours. Proof enough?"

"Fine… come on…"

As they left the room, Espio stopped over Blade's body.

"Sorry buddy… times have changed." He pulled the knife out of his eye and wiped it on his face.

Jet, particularly happy with his most recent gain, started searching for ammunition with which to use it. Wave had followed him in. Knuckles stayed outside on guard. Jet opened a cupboard near the ceiling. Inside was a small mechanical device.

"Hey, Wave, you're the techno whiz, can you tell me what this is?" He tossed it over to the swallow carelessly, and she fumbled it before catching it. She tipped her sunglasses up to inspect it.

"It looks like a… teleporta… shit!" She attempted to throw it away, but she was too late. Before it could leave her hand, a flash of blinding light engulfed the room. When Knuckles turned to see what had happened (Amy and Espio had also just entered the room), Jet and Wave were gone.

"Where'd they go?" Knuckles exclaimed angrily. Espio checked the floor. Scorch marks and white powder.

"They must have found the teleportation device."

"The what?" Amy was confused. Teleportation?

"Only Naugus has access to this technology. Vector used it to get to the front and back to the base quickly. Your friends must have found it."

"So where are they? And why should we trust you?" Knuckles slammed Espio against the wall. "How do we know they're not incinerated?"

"Knuckles, calm down…" Amy tried to relax Knuckles.

"I killed one of my own men just now… one of my friends… do you think I'd go back on that?" Espio replied frustratedly. Knuckles breathed heavily, fighting the anger. "They're probably in Naugus' base now. If they had any sense they'd give themselves up, and they'd be in the dungeon.

"There goes Jet…" Amy quipped.

"So how do we get there?"

"I know the fastest way. Follow me…" Espio leapt to the door.

"Really?" Knuckles was still uncooperative.

"Well do you want to try your luck in this maze?" He gave a quietly knowing smile and then left. Amy followed quickly. Knuckles waited for a second.

"Hey, wait for me!" He yelled as he bounded after them.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Eggman stopped at a large door, towering over them. Everyone stopped aswell. Even Eggman, standing at six foot seven, was dwarfed by the door. At its base was a small green pad. It looked like a touch pad. He took off one glove and turned around.

"Now, this is where I must lay my terms."

"Terms?" Sonic responded confrontationally. Tails, Blaze and Diesel readied their weapons.

"They are simple. Once I show you the way, you must allow me to leave without setting anyone else on me. Complete free passage to the outside. I have kept a few robots in reserve to aid me if a situation similar to this arose. They will escort me to safety. You will not attack them and, if needs be, aid them in escaping from Naugus." He stretched his bare hand out. "Do we have a deal?" He grinned.

Sonic was puzzled. Accept a deal from an age-old enemy to fight a greater evil? Or take the risk of fighting through hordes of soldiers? He hesitated.

"Come now, I don't have all day, and I presume neither do you."

He turned to the others.

"I don't trust this creep. I say put a bullet in him and leave him to rot." Shadow put bluntly.

"That's easy for you to say, but the rest of us aren't exactly as adept at fighting off whole crusades single-handedly. I say go with the deal." Rouge said, equally bluntly.

"It's a case of the lesser of to evils. We'll have to go with the deal. Naugus is a bigger problem." Silver added.

"I'm happy which ever way you go, either way Eggman's out of our hair, even if it is temporarily." Tails was a little less concerned about the matter.

"I think I'm with Tails on this one." Blaze seconded.

"Same." Diesel kept it short and to the point.

"Well, two to one…" Sonic waited some more. Eggman tapped his foot impatiently. "Deal." He said. Shadow cursed under his breath. Sonic slowly put his hand out to shake on it. At least he had his gloves on. He closed his eyes, gulped, and just got it over with.

"Yes, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Eggman smiled as Sonic wiped his hand on his jacket. Eggman turned around and pressed his hand on the pad. The doors hissed open. "Well, I'll be leaving now." He hurried away. Shadow scowled after him.

"I don't think that's the last we'll be seeing of him." The group progressed through the doors.

Cream poked an eye round the side of the wall. Clear. She signalled for the others to follow her. She scouted ahead a little. She saw Chris Thorndyke having a sissy fight with a broken vending machine. She rolled her eyes.

"Should we help him?" Tikal asked. Cream thought.

"Naah!" While they said this, Big went ahead. He picked Chris up by the head and gave the vending machine a hard whack. Several snacks and drinks fell out.

"Come on kid, before you get killed. You're ours to torture."

His head felt like it had been smashed in a door for two hours before being left to cool in an oven. He managed to shake it off and try and get a grip of where he was. He looked up. Bars. He looked in front of him. More bars. He looked down. He was bound to something behind him. He also noticed that his t-shirt was missing. Bastards stole it, he thought. He felt something knock into the back of his head.

"Jet?" It was Wave behind him.

"Yeah?" He responded.

"Oh good. We didn't get separated."

"What happened?"

"I think we got teleported. We must have passed out from the process."

"Why?"

"I take it you've never travelled by teleport before?"

"No."

"Exactly. The process drains your energy. If anything like flies or bugs get caught up in the blast, they usually get killed."

"Lovely."

They paused.

"Any idea what happens next?"

"My guess is as good as yours, green-butt." Jet laughed inside at this remark, but outside, he tried to elbow Wave, to no avail. They paused again.

"Do you think we'll make it out if this?" Wave asked.

"If the others find us, yes, but other wise, it looks bleak… Wave, I…" He hesitated.

"What?"

"We've worked together for a long time now, and… we might not have much longer, so… I was thinking…"

"I know where this is going, Jet. I know how you feel. But, I don't think we're right for each other. You're too… too… too hot-headed for me. You lose your temper easily." She could feel Jet sigh with disappointment. "Look, I'm sorry, but, it just wouldn't work."

"But why? I… I don't know anyone else, I…" He struggled to hold back the tears.

"You'll find someone, I know you will… but it's just not me. I know you. When you get angry… okay, I find it a turn-off, but you fight like a maniac, and apart from the fact that it'll probably get us out of here alive, there are girls who love that."

"I guess…" He sniffed. He shook it off and tried not to think.

"Oh, and did I mention that, well, you're a hawk, and I'm a swallow? Going down the crossbreeding route is pretty weird." Wave added, on a somewhat lighter note. Jet laughed.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

A man in a hooded cloak sat slumped in a large chair, watching a monitor. He chuckled to himself as he watched a couple of screens, monitoring the passageways. Everything was going just the way he had planned it to…

Sonic peered round the side of the wall. All these corridors were completely empty… he couldn't believe that Eggman could actually have been trusted.

"How much further?" Sonic queried. Tails flipped out a PDA.

"No signal… shit…" He reached back into his pack and pulled out another device with a screen and lots of buttons. "There should be some kind of map here…" He tapped away for a few moments. "Nothing! Absolutely nothing! It's like this tunnel doesn't exist!"

"Well, if it's a secret unguarded tunnel, that is kind of the point, right?" Rouge failed to see why Tails was frustrated. Shadow went ahead a little. He peered round the corner. He silently smiled. He looked back. Rouge and Tails were breaking into an argument, and Sonic was trying to broker peace to no avail. Perfect. He slipped away unnoticed.

He hung himself by his arms from a beam. He looked at the guards below – they were now wearing substantial armour. We must be getting close, he thought. He swung to the next beam, so that he was directly over them. He pulled out his trusty machete. The guards still suspected nothing. He dropped straight down on one, knocking him to the ground. He swiped at the other, knocking the gun out of his hands. Shadow stabbed the unfortunate soul he was standing on, before turning to confront his counterpart. Instead of backing away in fear, he stepped back a few times, and pulled something out of a pouch. It was a small vial, with a swirling sandy yellow substance inside. Shadow, though puzzled, was undeterred. He advanced slowly. Then he clutched his face in agony as the guard threw the vial's contents on him, mostly hitting his face. He stared in horror as the substance spread on to his arms. The soldier threw a spiked chain at him – it wrapped around Shadow's right arm, digging into his flesh. In an instant reaction, he pulled away. The chain snapped next to his wrist, leaving a segment embedded in his forearm. He fell back on to he ground, writhing in pain. The guard saw the fight as won, and fled.

Knuckles struggled to keep up with Espio and Amy, who were moving quite fast. Every now and then, they would reach a fork or crossroads, and Espio would think a moment, before saying "This way," and starting again. As they reached the end of a long pipe, a small gap lay between them and the hall ahead. Espio leapt across the gap with no problem. Amy took a run up, and only just managed to grab the ledge and pull herself up. Knuckles stared at the abyss with a look that said 'you have got to be kidding me,'.

"Come on! Jump!" Espio yelled across frustratedly.

"Wait there, I'll be right back!" Knuckles said as he ran back down the pipe. Espio looked like he was about to have a stroke. A few moments later Amy and Espio heard a rumble. Staring down the pipe, they saw the flow of water along it reduce to a trickle. The rumble grew louder and had become recognised as the sound of large amounts of flowing water. As it grew louder, it must have been an awful lot of water moving very fast. They could only watch as round the corner, an enormous wave of water surged down the pipe, and along with it, on a makeshift board made from a piece of loose metal, Knuckles. As the water burst out of the pipe, Amy and Espio were utterly soaked, and Knuckles soared overhead, and skidded across the floor, and into the next room. Amy and Espio followed, sorely tempted to throw Knuckles into the abyss he just flew over.

The area was empty – completely deserted. When the missiles struck, people just fled. Scanning the lawn for any signs of life, Cream gingerly stepped over rubble and ashes. Big followed. They left Tikal and Chris in a safe place (with the snacks from the vending machine).

"Where is everybody?" Cream enquired.

"There are no bodies or anything… it's just completely empty," Big was a touch wistful.

"Maybe everybody fled,"

"And took the bodies with them? Doubt it."

"Maybe there are no bodies because there weren't any to start with." Big didn't follow. Cream rolled her eyes. "It's possible not that many people died when the missiles hit." Big raised an eyebrow.

"Okay. Big noise, ground shakes, and when you look up, all the buildings are on fire. Nobody around. What do you think happened?" Big tried to rethink. Cream thought, and then glared.

"Let's just get moving,"

"Fine…"


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

"What the hell are you talking about you little tech geek?"

"You wouldn't give a shit about all this if the emerald wasn't involved!"

Sonic had given up on trying to keep the peace. He just sat to one side and waited for it all to blow over. He looked around. Tails and Rouge were still arguing. Silver was looking around at the surrounds. Blaze was sitting on a barrel, occasionally casting a glance to the heated debate. Diesel had begun to clean his guns. Shadow was… wait, where was Shadow?

"Uh, guys?"

"And another thing…"

"Hey, can you wait a sec?"

"Don't you lecture me on what I know better than you…"

"SHUT THE HELL UP!" Sonic yelled. Everyone stopped and stared at him. "Now… what was I going to say… oh yeah, where's Shadow?"

"Oh, he's right over…" Rouge looked round. "The… ah…"

"Now we have a problem."

"I think I saw him go that way a while ago," Blaze said nonchalantly, as if she didn't really care. "You guys seemed to busy to care." Sonic looked ready to explode. Silver rolled his eyes. Tails was quietly amused. Rouge gave him a tap on the back of the head (he had begun to stare into space). Sonic trudged off in search of Shadow, with Rouge in tow.

The tunnel came to an abrupt end at a junction with a larger one. However, the first one was about twelve feet above the other. Shadow would have had no problem swinging down these beams. Sure enough, there was Shadow, on the floor unconscious. He had a slight yellow glow on parts of him, but mostly on his right arm, where there was a very large wound, with parts of a chain embedded in the flesh. Rouge swung down from the beams using her whip. She landed with a thud. Sonic had a harder time getting down. On a beam about halfway down, he lost his balance and fell, with a bigger thud. Getting up slowly, he turned to look at Shadow.

"Hey, wakey wakey," Rouge slapped him lightly on the face. He scowled but did not wake. "Get some water," Sonic trudged off to find some. Luckily, there was an open water main nearby.

"Bring him over here," He called back. Rouge dragged him over and dunked his head in the flowing water. He shook himself awake.

"Wha… what the hell? Where am I? What happened?"

"Eh… we were hoping you could tell us,"

"All I remember is that I attacked this guy, and he threw something at me, and then I was in pain, and everything went blank…" He looked down at his arm. "Aagh! What the fuck!?" He exclaimed in alarm. He pulled at the pieces of chain. It didn't hurt. "It… doesn't hurt… it's not even bleeding…"

"Get Tails down to have a look at it,"

"He's a mechanic."

"He's still pretty smart,"

"He's a mechanic."

"Well you've got the metal stuck in your arm, don't you?"

"He's a mechanic. Is that not getting in?"

"Okay, you try and argue with an IQ of 200."

Shadow paused and thought.

"Crap."

"Tails! Get down here! We need you to have a look at something!" Sonic called up to the next floor.

"Oh God, what did they do this time…" He said as he hopped off the barrel he was sitting on, next to Blaze. He used a grappling gun to get down with ease. When he got there, Shadow was standing up, still fixated by the damage to his arm. "What the hell happened?"

"I attacked some guy, he threw some stuff one me, and probably this aswell, and then I passed out,"

"Any ideas what this stuff is?"

"He might have left the bottle over there," He pointed over to where he was. Tails looked at the ground. A small vial was nestled against the wall. He picked it up and inspected the label. He froze.

"Uh Tails? A little feedback? Hello?"

"Oh my God. Shadow, you have no idea how lucky you are."

"Lucky? I've got a frigging chain lodged in my arm! How the fuck is that lucky?"

"You got splashed with Formula T."

"Um… a little enlightenment please?"

"It's more poisonous than cyanide and almost as corrosive as sulphuric acid. You should be very dead."

"How dead?"

"Your face should be melting off by now." There were looks of mixed disgust and surprise all round. "I don't know how you survived. You must have had a previous encounter with this stuff."

"Hmm. I don't remember, but I might have…"

"Really?"

"Well I'm alive now, aren't I?"

"Mm. And about the chain… that's firmly stuck in your arm, right?"

"Yep. Not coming out anytime soon."

"It might have melted into your arm. It means the stuff is in your blood now, effectively part of you. Some weird stuff happens when Formula T doesn't kill people, it plays with their systems. You're still standing, so it can't be too bad,"

"Might make a couple of things awkward though…" Rouge added. Sonic giggled. Shadow glared.

Knuckles walked cheerfully behind Amy and Espio, who were both sopping wet and incredibly frustrated. They arrived at a large door.

"Normally I'd have to go around this, but somebody left the door open." There was a pedestal in the middle; the door had been open for a while. "This is Eggman's secret shortcut. It's usually closed, but who would leave it open?"

"Where does it lead?"

"Where we're going." Espio ventured on into the tunnel. Amy and Knuckles followed.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

"What's this?" Cream pulled the shutter up on a garage. There was a cart with something on it, covered by a sheet.

"Didn't Rouge leave something in here a few days ago?" Big stayed outside and watched cautiously.

"Yeah, this must be it…" She pulled the sheet away. Glittering in the half-light, the shattered emerald's pieces lay splintered in the cart. "Wha… it can't be… she… she found it?"

"That girl and her jewels… what am I saying, all these girls…"

"We have to protect it!"

"My point exactly…" He whispered to himself. Cream walked over and slapped him on the back of the head.

A clunk of feet on metal. Sliver, Blaze and Diesel ducked behind barrels and readied their weapons. They watched three figures, obscured by the dim light and some debris, enter the room. They stopped in the centre of the room.

"It looks like someone was here," one said. Another's eyes darted across the room, as if had seen Silver. In reaction, Silver jumped out and held a knife to the neck of one. Blaze & Diesel followed suit, Blaze using her trusted flamethrower instead. All their victims could do was struggle.

Shadow heard a commotion in the tunnel they had just left. He jumped up on to the beams and found his way in no problem. Tails used his grappling gun, which he threw back to Sonic when he was finished. Rouge flew up.

"Wha… what the hell are you guys doing?" Sonic said in exasperation as he saw that Silver, Blaze and Diesel had captured Amy, Knuckles and Espio.

"Who are these then?" Silver was quite confused to say the least.

"They're ours! They're with us!" They let them go. Amy ran over to Sonic and threw her arms around him. They kissed, while the others stared. Silver broke the awkward silence, and noticed Shadow's arm.

"What happened?"

"Here we go again… how about I wait until everybody's listening to explain again?"

After a brief stop to regroup and eat, they set off for Robotropolis. They had exchanged stories so they were all up to date on what happened. Their priorities were to find Jet & Wave, confront Naugus and get out. It was about 3 in the afternoon.

Their path converged with another larger path. All the tunnels seemed to get bigger as they went on, as they got closer. They eventually came to a road, and a busy one at that. All trucks and tanks, military vehicles. There were soldiers in abundance. They hid behind some barrels and surveyed the tunnel. About two hundred metres or so away, the tunnel came to a large gate. When it opened, they could see the streets of the city. Nearly there!

Shadow grunted, clutching his arm.

"What's wrong?"

"Ugh… my… arm… it feels like… aagh… AARGH!" He fell forward through the barrels, knocking them over and causing a great commotion. It grabbed the attention of the entire compound. Sonic slammed his head on a barrel. As Shadow writhed on the ground in pain, some soldiers came over to inspect him. They didn't notice anyone else. Shadow lay still for a second. Then he leapt up off the ground, and appeared different. Sword in his left hand, his other arm had changed. Bright yellow marks extended across his arms and onto his torso, the red and white marks on his quills and chest had gone bright yellow, his quills had slicked back, his irises had gone a flaming yellow, and out of his right arm, a long spiked chain extended from where the original chain had broken. He kicked one in the face, sending him spinning through the air. He swung the chain around the neck of another, and pulled him across to knock another over. He slashed a fourth across the torso and again on the back of the neck, and he whipped the chain across the face of the fifth and final one. He stood there, seething, with a look on his face that said to the rest of the compound: 'Bring it on'.

A hail of bullets hurtled towards him almost immediately. He jumped up out of the way, and began swinging towards the gate along ceiling with the chain. With a look that said 'what the hell, why not', Sonic leapt over the barrel and charged forth. One by one, everyone else followed them into battle.

With Shadow on their side, there was no way they could lose. Within ten minutes, the entire compound had been reduced to mangled bodies and smoking craters. Shadow, breathing heavily, started to convulse violently, and fell to his knees. The yellow markings on him disappeared as his colouring returned to normal, his quills returned to normal, and the long spiked chain slid into his forearm and vanished from view. He fell to the ground, conscious, but shaken and exhausted. His arm still had the chain embedded in it, still glowing yellow.

"Whu… what happened? What just happened to me?" He asked, confused. Rouge came over and picked him up.

"Maybe Tails here, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Chemistry, can explain…" Tails scowled at her while she said this. He turned to Shadow.

"The Formula took over certain parts of your body and changed them temporarily, in this case your quills and your arm mostly. It seems to so far have only had a beneficial effect, but this could change at any moment."

"What about the chain? That was kinda weird…"

"It must have used the chain stuck in your arm to build more chain…"

"Um… HOW?"

"What happened to your gun while you went, eh… crazy?" Shadow reached round to his gun. It was still in its holster, but it was quite hot. "It's possible that the Formula used the metal in the gun to make the extra chain length." Shadow pulled the gun out.

"But how?"

"Check if it still works." Shadow fired off a couple of shots into a barrel.

"Seems fine." He pointed it at an indeterminate point near the gate. He fired. A clank was heard as it hit a small can perched on a ledge. "Still as accurate as when I left it."

"Any ideas about how to get in?" Knuckles said what everybody was thinking.

"Nothing a good burn can't fix…" Blaze said confidently as she pointed her flamethrower at the gate doors. Squeezing the trigger, a massive flame ranging from red to white via yellow spewed from its barrel, and set to work on melting the gate. After a good minute and a half of constant burning, she ceased. She lifted up her goggles, staring in disbelief at the doors which were barely scorched. She spit on it. Instead of evaporating instantly, it hung there, dripping slightly. She took off her glove and felt the door. "It's not even warm!"

"Youse guys are barking up the wrong tree." A voice came from behind them. Weapons were hastily readied. "The name's Nack. Judging by what I've just seen, I'd be pretty useful to youse." A purple weasel appeared from the shadows, brandishing a wide grin. Not inconspicuously stashed in his belt were two rather large pistols.

"What makes you say that?" Sonic folded his arms, not convinced.

"You seem to be lacking lateral thinking power."

"Huh?"

"Think about it. You are in a hangar full of massive tanks, and you're wasting precious thermite trying to melt a diamond tempered door."

"Ah." Sonic began to feel awkward and somewhat embarrassed.

"So, jack one of the tanks and bust through the door?" Blaze queried.

"Way ahead of you." Diesel was already at work prising open the hatch on the tank nearest the gate.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

"Blast! That weasel… I've seen him before… he is a dangerous foe indeed. Stop them by any means necessary." The hooded figure fumed at his screens. He had not vouched for this interference…

While Diesel and Tails where busy hot-wiring the tank, Nack, Sonic and Espio surveyed the maps of the city.

"The central fort is here – big glass thing. Can't miss it. Your friends are probably here." Nack poked a thickly gloved finger at a circle on the blueprint-style map.

"The street goes straight from here to there. Is that too obvious a route, or should we go around a little?"

"It won't matter. The tank only goes, what, five, six miles per hour? It's pretty damn heavy. The sooner we get there the better."

"Now, these doors are security locked from the inside. We'll need someone to infiltrate and open them." Both Nack and Sonic looked at Espio.

"I suppose I would be the obvious choice… oh, and do you know what's even better? As far as they know, I'm still working for them!"

"No. They know. They've got cameras up all over the place."

"Then how come they didn't see us coming?"

"You went through the secret tunnel. That's completely unmonitored."

"So, stealth as usual?" Sonic and Nack nodded to this.

Tails fiddled away at an electric panel, occasionally snipping the odd wire, and attaching it somewhere else.

"You're doing that all wrong…" Diesel shoved him out of the way. "That goes here, and you flip that… wait, what the hell's that?"

"I thought this might happen. Because you're from the future, you've been trained with future technologies, but here we're using technology that, to you anyway, has been obsolete for… how long?"

"About two hundred years." At this, they turned around to see Nack drop into the centre of the tank. He took one look at what they were doing, and then turned to the control panel.

"You really are the dumbest smart people I have ever known." He flipped out a switchblade and stuck it in the ignition. When he twisted it, his expression went from smug to confused as the control panel merely blipped and said "Unauthorised Access Attempt".

"Did you really think we hadn't tried that already?"

"If it was as simple as that we'd already be out of here." Tails thought for a second.

"Wait, keep that knife there…" He ducked under the panel. Nack pulled his feet out of the way. He pulled a box away and threw it away. He ripped out a wire, and began fiddling with the circuitry. He taped the wire back in and got out. "Try it again." Nack twisted the knife again. The engine burst into life.

"All right! Get everybody in and we're ready to rumble,"

Espio waited behind the tank. As the last few people climbed in, Sonic shut the hatch after them. The interior screens flickered into life – they could now see where they were going. Espio watched as the tank rumbled forward with unstoppable inertia. It wasn't particularly fast, but it definitely laid the gate to waste. As he watched it trundle away, he leapt into the shadows and followed the tank along. It attracted attention almost immediately. Several radio transmissions came in, all left unanswered. It was only when they were halfway there that the Naugus' forces realised the errant tank's intentions.

It is assumed that a city's defence systems should aim outside the city, as most threats requiring the use of large weapons come from outside the city. However, in the rare event that such a threat is inside the city, these systems become powerless as they either are unable to face the right way, or run the risk of destroying the city in the process of rooting out the threat. This is one of those rare events.

Jet shook himself awake. He had been sleeping, finding nothing else to do. He could hear some commotion outside, a long way away. Straining to hear, he tried to crane his neck toward the door. Rescuers? Possible. He tried to struggle against the ropes. Still as tight and unstinting as ever. Why were they keeping us alive this long? And why did they have to steal my goddamn shirt?

Nack yanked Diesel out of the driver's seat.

"Move it, kid, I've got a plan…" He pushed the throttle right up. The tank ploughed straight into the front wall, and carried on a few metres through it. It ground to a halt with the front end lodged in the building, and the rear end sticking out the back. Silver pushed on the hatch. It barely budged. A small amount of light and dust came in through this gap.

"Aagh, Nack, you've stuck the hatch against the wall!"

"Exactly the plan. They can't get in."

"But we can't get out." Tails was not impressed.

"Oh, but we can. Blaze?" Sonic had a brainwave.

"Yeah?"

"Flamethrower time."

"Oh. Swish." She gleefully stepped towards the front of the tank. She held down the trigger and watched the entire front of the tank melt away into a small pool of liquid steel. "And there's your exit."

"Right, who wants to be the first to walk on the molten metal?" Rouge quipped.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

The simple innovation of a strip of the interior of the tank solved the problem of the molten iron river. Shadow, however, was now feeling well enough to jump over the bubbling metal without a problem. The coast was clear. Nack surveyed the situation. The corridor stretched out in two directions, one tapered up, the other down. It was fairly obvious which led where.

"Okay. Youse," He pointed to Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy. "Go that way and find the birds." Tails raised an eyebrow and smiled at this jibe. "The rest of youse," He motioned to Shadow, Rouge, Silver, Blaze and Diesel. "Come with me to find Naugus. Youse can try and find us then." He turned and started up the corridor. "Well? Get moving!" He continued, without regard for the others, who were still dawdling behind slightly. Sonic slowly set off the other way.

The corridors above ran up a tower, stairs constantly spiralling upwards. The building was built of stone and mortar, like a medieval castle, unusual in this day and age. There was very little in the way of resistance, and effective resistance was non-existent. After a long walk with no point of reference, and hence, an indeterminate time, they arrived in a large room. On one side was a massive window – from it they could see out over the clouds that covered the entirety of Robotropolis. In the horizon, the ocean could be seen glinting in the sunlight. The sun was getting lower in the sky, which was slowly turning orange. It must have been around six in the evening. Silver walked straight over to the other side of the room – an open wall, with a wide bridge to a central tower. There were guards visible over there – they must have retreated to the central tower to protect Naugus.

Rouge stood facing the window. She gazed out pensively. The others were elsewhere in the room, checking their weapons, readying themselves. Shadow inspected his arm with childlike curiosity. Nack walked over to the window where Rouge stood.

"Ya look a little out of it there, Rougey." Her face remained still. Then she turned to him and said bluntly,

"Why'd you come back?" He looked down and sighed.

"Because I'm tired of fighting." He said, exasperated. "Because I'm tired of having to live every day with the threat of not seeing the next one. When I was exiled I thought it would be a fresh start, I thought I could start a new life away from all this. I tried to get out, but it pulled me back in…"

"So the fighting wasn't as much fun as you thought it would be?"

"It's been, what, four years now? It's a long time to be living from hand to mouth. I've been lucky to get this far. I just want this war to be over. The sooner the better. Who took over the team?"

"Shadow. He was too young… that's how we lost Manic."

"Manic's gone?"

"We don't know. They never found him. We left one day and he got separated. Sonic was furious. I don't think he ever forgave Shadow."

"Poor guy. I thought I saw Manic a couple of years ago… couldn't have been."

"Well you've turned up. You never know what happens in a stream of unlikely events."

The tunnel spiralled downwards getting increasingly darker, until they could barely make out the walls and floor. After what seemed like an eternity, the curving corridor straightened out and ahead they saw the entrance to what appeared to be a dungeon of sorts. There was a skylight in the middle of the room – odd. Several guards milled around the front. They crouched in the shadows, waiting.

"What do we do?" Tails whispered.

"If we shoot, it'll give us away," Knuckles tossed out.

"If we charge at them, they'll shoot us." Sonic added.

"I've got it." Amy slipped a small knife out of her pocket. "I've still got a few of these left." She fished out three more. "That's it… damn. No more. Have to make these count…" She took a moment to aim, and then sent them spinning towards her victims. Each one hit their target with deadly accuracy. The one remaining guard panicked, before looking around to find them. He sank to his knees with a bullet hole in his forehead. Sonic blew the smoke from the barrel of his pistol.

"Borrowed this silencer off Tails… what? I couldn't let you have ALL the fun."

Knuckles took the key off one of the guards. He pushed the door open. There was a small dungeon corridor with about twelve cells. Before they could examine further, they heard approaching footsteps behind them - sounded like several people in a hurry. They turned to see six men in white uniform and armour. A small black object hurtled out, and bounced across the room.

"GET DOWN!" Tails screamed. Everybody was alert enough to drop to the ground to brace for the explosion. He looked round to see the grenade blow the far wall open, sending shrapnel and debris across the floor. And, lying on the floor…

"Agh… augh, what the fuck?" Jet picked himself off the ground, able to move for the first time in hours. Looking round, he saw the ensuing gunfight across the way. He grabbed Wave, still adjusting, and leapt behind some upturned furniture for cover.

"What happened?" She asked, still slightly dazed.

"Looks like a rescue effort." He pointed at Sonic, Tails, Amy and Knuckles sprawled out on the ground on the slope. He looked down at the ground. "Hey! My t-shirt!" He scooped up his beloved shirt and threw it over his head.

"Priorities, Jet." Wave began looking around for their weapons. Sure enough, the pistol, magnum and two machine pistols were strewn around, along with ammunition.

"Those guys look like they need a hand." Jet said before leaping over the overturned chest and joined them.

"Ah, Jet, the very man…" Was all Tails said before standing straight up and cocking his shotgun. He squeezed off one… two… three… four… five… six rounds. He cocked it one last time, emptying the last casing. He looked toward the ground, flipped a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and placed them on his face.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Silver stared out across the bridge. He contemplated the consequences of marching across it, weighing up the factors. With very sparse cover, it would be risky from the start, and Diesel had neglected to bring a vehicle. Discretion would be an advantage… He turned and silently signalled to Blaze and Diesel to follow him. Nack and Rouge were still busy talking, and Shadow was too absorbed in his arm to notice. They left silently and moved quickly.

Fortunately the guards were blissfully unaware of their approach. Blaze stowed the flamethrower for something for use in tight spaces. Twin shot pistols should be ideal. Diesel readied a machine gun. They ducked behind some rubble close to their targets. Silver counted down with his fingers. 3, 2, 1… on the closing of his fist all three leapt over the rubble and opened fire.

"So where are the others?" Jet was quick on the questions.

"They went the other way."

"How far is it?"

"An hour that way." Sonic pointed the way they came.

"Ah, there has to be a quicker way…"

Tails looked up. In the ceiling was a hole, opening into a shaft that stretched up hundreds of metres, with blue sky visible at the top. He thought. Wave noticed this.

"Oh, surely the greatest prodigy of the engineering school can find a way up with no problem…" She quipped cynically.

"Well you find a way to climb a few hundred metres straight up a tube." He retorted. Wave looked up and thought. She looked back.

"Okay, I'll give you that one." As they stared up thinking, they noticed something in the distance. It was falling to the ground with speed. They made room for it. The end of a rope dropped on the ground. Looking back up, they noticed something bigger descending. As the shadow grew, they stood back further. With a thud, Espio dropped to the ground on his feet.

"I thought you guys could use a hand."

"Seems to be the simplest option."

"Rougey, you remember when I was on the force?"

"Yeah, you were made captain six years ago, about this month aswell. I'd just joined the team."

"No, I'm talking about when I was exiled."

"Oh, right… I meant to ask, what the hell were you thinking when you did that?"

"I didn't mean to do it! Do you think I would do that deliberately? Why the fuck would I kill her? I mean, it was a complete accident! They attacked the fort, and she got caught in the crossfire!"

"It was your bullets they took out of her."

"It was her own fault for running into a gunfight! I always knew Mina was too dumb for her own good…"

"Four years and you're still bitter about it. You're lucky they called manslaughter and not murder."

"I suppose… God, talk about a messy affair…"

"Hmm. Silver's been very quiet. Silver, you still th…" Rouge turned around to see empty space where Silver was. "Silver?" She looked around.

"Goddamit, the bastard fucked off!"

"Stuck-up prick…" Shadow muttered under his breath.

"I suppose we better find them. Come on!" Nack pulled the Law Givers out of his belt and charged forth. Shadow and Rouge followed. Shadow slowed down, groaning.

"What's the hold up?" Nack called back.

"Ugh… I think it might be happening again…"

"Oh yeah, I saw that… come on, you'd wanna be near some of them before you go."

Amy was the last to climb up to the top of the pipe. It surfaced at the base of the central tower. Espio was already hurrying on. Knuckles noticed Nack, Shadow and Rouge on the bridge in the distance.

"C'mon, let's go!" Espio called back.

Inside was a different story. Espio, in his haste, had thrown caution to the wind and marched headlong into a group of heavily armed soldiers. He slowly raised his hands, as fifteen guns aimed at him. The others slowly approached as the guards' attention was focussed on Espio. After a tense moment, Knuckles grabbed someone by the back of the neck and snapped it. This gave Amy the opportunity to stick her sword through another. She swung the back of the hammer in to back of a third's head. She took the cross staff from her back and threw it to Sonic. Knuckles disarmed another and shot a few more in the face. Sonic pole vaulted over Espio and landed on another guard, before thrusting one end of the staff into the crotch of the nearest one. Espio whipped out some shuriken. He noticed a few soldiers about to shoot Knuckles, so he threw them in that direction. All three fell to the ground. Amy pulled out the sword and threw it across the room, slicing one head and sticking in another. With her hammer, she went for the last guard. Sonic knocked his knees out with the staff, and Amy smashed his face in with the hammer. Tails, Jet and Wave simply stared. Amy was flecked with blood, as always.

"Well, you said we should do things together…" Amy laughed as Sonic observed the blood-soaked activity they had just undertaken together.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

"Damn, they're smart." Nack said, while he kicked a body over to see its front.

"Why?"

"Blaze stashed her flamethrower to try and hide her tracks. None of these bodies have scorch marks. They could be anywhere in the building by now."

"Bastards… aagh!" Shadow began, and was suddenly hit by spasms which brought him to the ground. He clutched at his arm. Nack and Rouge could only watch as his red markings faded to yellow, and a long spiked chain extended out of his right arm, causing the gun on his back to disappear temporarily. Shining yellow marks spread across his arm and on to his shoulder, causing some of the white fur on his stomach to fall away, and the rest turned yellow. He lay still for a moment, before he opened his eyes, which had also gone yellow, and jumped to his feet. In a deeper, even monstrous voice, he said, "Catch me if you can, motherfuckers!" Before swinging the chain around a pole in the ceiling and swinging away and up the tower.

"Ah crap, now we lost Shadow too?" Nack cursed at the ground, attempting to decide what to do.

"While you stand here with your indecision, our yellow friend is getting away!" Rouge shouted back as she flew upwards in search of Shadow. Nack simply stared.

"Bastards." He turned and headed for a staircase.

Sonic stared upwards, taking in the vista of the hundreds of storeys of tower leading up to the top.

"Oh, come on! Who the fuck needs a castle this size? I mean, seriously! What the fuck?"

"Flying would be so useful about now…" Tails added.

"Hey, what's that up there?" Jet pointed up at a black and yellow object swinging from the rafters about halfway up.

"Oh, God, Shadow's gone psycho again…" Amy squinted to see towards the top.

"What?" Jet stared in disbelief. "What happened?"

"Oh, he got infected with Formula T," Tails responded, casually. Jet raised an eyebrow, as if to say, 'you what?'. "Basically, this stuff that was supposed to kill him didn't, he had a chain wrapped around his arm, and now every so often, he turns into, heh… 'Dark Shadow', as I like to call him…"

"'Dark Shadow'? 'Dark Shadow'? That makes no sense at all."

"That still doesn't answer the question of 'How the fuck do we get up there!'" Sonic pointed up to the top.

"I guess that's my cue…" Somebody said.

"Wha!?" An open-top ship pulled up next to them, with Diesel in the driving seat.

"You guys need a ride?" He said, leaning over the side. Sonic was all too enthusiastic about getting in.

"Eh… who the hell's he?" Wave was somewhat less enthusiastic.

"We'll explain on the way, just get in!" Amy followed Sonic into the back. Tails hopped over into the front. He pushed Diesel out of the way.

"Move over, bud, I'm driving… come on, hurry up!" Diesel grudgingly sat in the passenger seat. Wave was the last to get in, if reluctantly. The ship sped away, climbing gradually.

"So what happened to Nack and Rouge?"

"We ditched them." Diesel said indifferently.

"You what?"

"We ditched them. They just sat there talking, and we were ready to go, so we took the initiative. Or, rather Silver did. I was happy sitting there."

"So they could be anywhere?"

"Yeah, now that I think about it."

"Idiots."

"Silver and Blaze should be just there." Diesel pointed across the way. Tails stopped the ship next to it. Sure enough, waiting on them, Silver was pacing while Blaze sat with an mp3 player. She put it away when she saw them. Everybody got out. Diesel clipped Tails on the way out.

"So why'd you ditch Nack?" Sonic was not impressed.

"He was being slow."

"He knows this place better than you or I do."

"That's no help if he won't move his butt." There was a rumble. Everybody looked at Knuckles.

"What? Why are you looking at me?" There was another rumble. Some dust fell from the ceiling.

"Now we have a problem." A third, longer rumble, and some rocks fell from the ceiling. "Wanna move?"

"Yeah." A fourth started, and didn't stop. The rocks falling from the ceiling increased in size.

"Eh, run?" A rock fell and skulled Blaze. She fell, unconscious. Everyone else ran. Tails was the only one to notice Blaze. He ran back and pulled her out of the way of the falling rocks. When they were clear, he noticed that they were on the wrong side of the rubble. Everyone else had gotten away on the outside, they were still next to the central shaft. Worse still, a stray rock had knocked the hovercraft away into the middle of the shaft.

"Where's Tails? And Blaze?"

"Were they crushed?"

"Wait, I've got the radio…" Sonic pulled the radio from his belt. "Tails? Tails? Are you there?" They waited a few seconds.

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah… Blaze is out cold, but other than that, she's fine. We're stuck in here though."

"Under the rubble?"

"No, on the other side, stupid. The ship got knocked away. We're trapped for now."

"Damn… alright. We'll try and find another ship. Stay there,"

"I'm sure we will…"


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Shadow smiled as he hung from a beam near the top. He swung straight over and slashed a guard in the back. He swung the chain around the neck of a second, and pulled him into the third. He quickly moved on, now more concerned about killing people than stopping Naugus. His chain proved a useful item indeed, not only a weapon, but a tool for transport. He mulled over a few names for it, such was the ego of 'Dark Shadow'. 'Scorpion Tail' seemed kind of obvious, so no… something to do with metal… Avenged Sevenfold… aha! Vengeance… a suitable alter ego for his gun, Valentine.

Rouge had lost track of Shadow entirely. He was just too fast. She stopped for a rest in an alcove. As she caught her breath, she heard breathing that wasn't hers… there was someone else here. She looked round… only shadows. She pulled out her dagger – just in case. She looked in further. The alcove went a little deeper. The way was lit by a torch just around the corner. She went to inspect something written on it. She heard the breathing getting more prominent… wary, she tightened her grip on the knife. She heard something swinging. Instinctively, she turned around and raised her dagger. Sure enough, a second dagger was being held off by hers. She couldn't see its owner. She ducked under and the knife slid away. It came back for a second attack. She sidestepped and tried to grab the attacker's arm. He pulled away and pulled her off her feet. He threw her over his head, but she pulled him with her and flipped him aswell. She rolled on to her feet. She saw the attacker when he landed on his feet a few metres away – it was a black bat, with deep scarlet wings. He was quite muscular, and somewhat battle scarred – he had a patch over his right eye. He was wearing a long black leather coat. They stared at each other for what could have been a minute, but it could have been an hour. Finally, he spoke in a deep, but clear, voice;

"What are you doing here?"

"I could ask the same question."

"For all I know you could be working for Naugus."

"Same again." An awkward silence fell on the corridor. Rouge eventually broke it. "Well that was one hell of an introduction."

"Names, eh? You start."

"Why?"

"Small world – I might remember you from somewhere."

"Then I should remember you."

"Blade. Ring any bells? Ah, Goddamit!" He cursed when he realised he had let his ego get ahead of his intentions.

"Rouge. Pleasure meeting you." Blade raised an eyebrow as Rouge stood straight up and stowed her knife.

"We should split up. You guys," He pointed at Silver, Diesel, Jet and Wave. "Go find some wheels, boards, whatever, something to move faster. We'll try and find the others. Tails and Blaze should be fine for now. Let's go!" Sonic hurried off with Amy and Knuckles close behind. Silver sighed as Jet, Wave and Diesel hurried on, excited by the prospect of vehicular transportation. He trudged on like a frustrated parent, trying to keep them out of trouble.

Another flight of stairs… how many can there be? Thought Nack, as he ascended with the hope of finding either Shadow or Rouge. There was little point looking for both by now. He stopped in a small hallway for a breather. The place had black curtains all over. In the centre was a rug, a small futon, a lamp and some clothes strewn around the floor. Someone was living here. A chest lay open to one side. It was filled with ammunition. He heard a rustling in the curtains. He backed against the wall. A booted foot flung itself at him. He sidestepped it and hit it away. He whipped out a gun and aimed in its general direction. He ducked and rolled through the drapes, keeping his aim fixed the whole time. A fist grabbed the barrel of the gun and tried to take it off him. After a struggle, it slipped out of both their hands and bounced across the floor. Nack reached forward and found shoulders. He flipped himself over them and drew his other gun. When he landed he found himself staring down the barrel of another gun. Holding the gun, however, was a familiar face. A green hedgehog with his quills spiked up, a pair of sunglasses resting on his forehead, and a scar across his right eye. Well, the scar was new, but the other features he recognised.

"Manic?"

"Nack?"

"I thought you were dead!"

"I thought you were dead!"

"It's been too long."

"What is it, four years?"

"About that."

"So what brings you to my humble abode?"

"Just passing through, kill Naugus, that kind of thing."

"Did they take you back?"

"No, but they were passing through and needed a hand. What have you been doing?"

"Living here. The whole tower is usually deserted. It's kinda comfy when you get used to it."

"Why didn't you make your way back?"

"I couldn't. I was on the run for about three months, before they lost me in here. Pretty cavernous and empty."

Blaze groaned. Her head was spinning – it felt like there was a lump in it, where it had been hit. She opened her eyes, and the image that slowly came into focus was… Tails. She jumped. He fell backwards, nearly off the edge.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to… you just gave me a jump, that's all…"

"It's okay, I didn't fall off…" He responded, shaken, and slightly embarrassed. He sat down next to her.

"What happened? All I remember is getting hit on the head."

"The others escaped the other way. I pulled you out of the way of the rocks, but it was to this side. The ship was knocked out into the middle of the shaft. See?" He pointed out to where it was, slowly dropping to the ground.

"Why didn't Silver and Diesel help me?"

"Diesel, I think, nearly wet himself," Blaze laughed at this. "Silver was too concerned about himself to notice."

"Bastard… well… um, thanks…"

"No problem…" He stared out across the shaft. Blaze took off her gloves and jacket.

"God, it's warm…" She looked over at Tails. He wasn't staring at the far side of the shaft any more. "Do you have a clip in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

With childlike glee Jet picked up every one of the airboards and inspected it, and he tried a couple of them aswell. Wave was more scrutinising in her search – she only looked at a few, and eventually decided on one. Diesel, however, was already stuck into a kart, tuning it up. Silver simply stood at the wall, shaking his head.

"Come on, playtime's running short."

"It's not me, it's my Emo friend here," Wave said, tugging on Jet's prized My Chemical Romance t-shirt.

"Fuck off," He snapped back. He grabbed a board. "I'll take this one."

"You make it sound like you're in a store,"

"Might as well be. Look at the choice!"

"Can't argue with that!" Diesel called from under the kart.

"Right. I'm outta here." Jet hopped on the board and left the room quickly. Wave followed.

"Goddamit… come on, Diesel, playtime's over." Silver jumped into a ship. It had guns mounted all over. Diesel reluctantly slid out and jumped into the gunner's seat. Silver fired up the engines, and the hangar doors opened automatically. The ship slid gracefully away and out into the dome.

"Wait… I heard you were dead. Espio killed you. Is that correct?"

"No. It was a trick. We planned to defect long in advance. I'd already lost this eye."

"So why did you, anyway?"

"Because nobody likes the mercs. They're the scum of this shit-hole. Even the regular troops hate us. Eggman was pretty much the only one who gave us any respect. It's just as well that we did when we did, because Naugus had no use for Vector by now anyway."

"So what about Mighty?"

"He was a deluded moron. He just didn't see the big picture. It's just as well your hawk friend put two bullets in him – he never knew what was going down."

"Oh? Is it bigger than it seems? Or can it get much bigger than dismantling the world's primary oppressive force?"

"Hmm. Maybe I've said too much…" With that, Blade jumped into the air, and flew away into the central cavern. Rouge tried to follow, but he was too fast. She gave up quickly. It was then that she saw in one of the hallways, a familiar purple weasel. And another figure who also looked vaguely familiar… She swooped in behind them. Nack she recognised instantly. The other figure… a green hedgehog with spiked up quills, and was that another long leather coat?

"Everybody's got these leather coats… is there a fad?"

"Hmm. Effortlessly dry wit, it has to be…" He wheeled round. "Yes it is! Rouge!" Manic bounded down the two steps and gave Rouge what was less of a hug and more of a glomp.

"Yes… daily tackle, Manic, I presume?"

"So, how did things get so bad, like, so that you had to travel to the past to try and fix it?" Tails was ever curious about the future. Blaze didn't mind obliging.  
"Well, Naugus found the master emerald, despite the fact that it was in the freedom fighters base, and he used Formula T to fix it."

"Weird stuff, isn't it?"

"So with the master emerald in his power, he all but obliterated the freedom fighters, and most of his own army aswell. What are your numbers now, 50,000? 75,000?"

"Worldwide, about that… nearly 125,000 including civilians."

"In about 200 years that's down to 500."

"Five hundred?" Tails said in outright shock. "Five hundred world wide? With or without civilians?"

"With. Naugus used the emerald to make himself immortal, and we couldn't find a way to destroy him then, so we travelled back in time to before he found it."

"Slightly inconvenient time to do it, though, like, why not when he was a kid, or something? It would save everyone some time."

"We have to keep the alteration of the past to a minimum. Who knows what could have happened even just by being here? I mean, as an example, if I kick that rock over the edge… well, it seems innocent enough, right? Well, that rock could hit someone down below and kill them. Say it's… say it's my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather? That means no more me. Or, I'd be different." For some reason, Tails smiled.

"Aha. Now this is where my theory comes in."  
"What?"

"I've been working on a theory about time travel, which makes it possible to go back, and change things that affect your own past, and you won't be changed."

"Do tell…"  
"When you travel back in time, you enter a theoretical bubble, like a dismembered segment of time, so that regardless of how you change the past, you won't be affected. Your own past becomes separate from what the rest of the universe experiences, including an entirely separate you. Alternatively, you could have been predetermined to go back in time and the result of the war is already predetermined, we just don't know it yet. But that's not a very nice idea, is it?" Blaze looked thoroughly confused.

"Don't even bother trying to explain…" She sighed. She looked thoughtful for a moment before leaning on Tails' shoulder with a depressed look on her face.

"What is it?"

"Oh, I just thought about family for a second."

"You miss 'em?"

"Never really had one. I was always told my parents died in the wars, when I was a baby, and my brother died later aswell. There are only three cats left in the whole world… or my world, anyway." She closed her eyes. Tails could see a tear forming in the corner of one. He put his arm around her and hugged her.


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

"Hmm… could it be? Could this… rabble… could they be the ones?" The hooded figure slumped in his chair. He twiddled his thumbs as he contemplated the ramifications of what he saw. "They had better not be."

Silver eyed his surrounds. The airspace was deserted, and just as well, Diesel was asleep in his seat. There didn't seem to be much in the way of entrances to the interior of the tower. After a while, out of pure frustration, he just decided to make his own. He reached back to Diesel's panel and pressed a button. Two missiles shot into the side of the building, blowing a hole in it. Hopefully he didn't hit anyone…

Guiding the ship in was easy; the hole was pretty big. The interior was more than spacious enough to allow it to move around easily. The abandoned ship was made a good beacon for Tails and Blaze, who waved them over when they could see them.

"You guys alright?"

"No thanks to you." Blaze was still somewhat irritated at Silver.

"Look, I didn't see you getting hit, Tails did. Can we put that behind us now?"

"Oh, it's nice knowing I have a trustworthy captain…" She dripped with sarcasm as she tossed her jacket and flamethrower on Diesel's lap. He nearly had a stroke.

"Wha… what the hell? Oh…" He slumped over the console to try and sleep again.

"Look, are you going to get in or not?"

"Oh, I'm coming," She said as she jumped into the back. "I'm just wondering how much you value your life if, should the situation arise, I need to save it…"

"Just drop it, okay? I'm… I'm sorry. Is that what you want?"

"No, what I want is safety in the knowledge that I can rely on others to pull me out of a life-threatening situation regardless of who they are."

"Oh, this is going to be a long trip…" Tails buried his face in his hands as he followed into the back.

Espio checked a body.

"Hmm. Traces of Formula T. Shadow must have passed this way."

"Shh!" Sonic called out. "I hear something." He ran to the corner. There was still nothing there. He could still hear something – screaming, like tortured cries of pain. "He's somewhere here." He ran to the next corner. There, in the centre of the floor, Shadow writhed on the ground, in obvious and extreme pain. He stopped momentarily and held himself up, and coughed up a small amount of blood. Then he fell back to the ground, unconscious.

"Ew… what happened?" Knuckles came round the corner and only saw the end of Shadow's episode.

"I don't know… that stuff could be killing him."

"Where's Tails when you need him…"

"Ugh…"

"He's coming round."

"What happened? Where am I?" He opened his eyes, clutching his head.

"You still in there, buddy?"

"What? Sonic, what the heck are you doing here? The last thing I remember, I was with Nack and Rouge…"

"That must have been, what… two hours ago?"

"I've been out for two hours? Ugh…" His head was still spinning. "I hope I didn't do anything stupid…"

"Not yet…"

"What's that?" Shadow's acute hearing had preceded him. While the others were clueless to what he had heard, he gazed down the hallway that descended into the blackness. He, to everyone's surprise, jumped to his feet. He readied himself for something. To him, time slowed down. This gave him enough room to grab Jet and Wave off their boards as they zoomed past. The boards skidded across the floor, and stopped at the wall.

"Agh… aw, dude, what the fuck? I mean, why the fuck did you do that?"

"Knowing you bird-brains, you'd probably have carried on without us."

"But why the grabbing off of boards? Come on!"

"Shadow has a point. You would have kept racing round the tower if he hadn't stopped you. And we have to wait for the others."

"Slow bastards…"

"Is that our cue?" Nack stepped out of the shadows. Rouge followed.

"What the… how the fuck?"

"We got some help from an old friend…" Rouge looked back to where they had come from. Sonic gazed in awe as he watched his long lost brother Manic emerge. He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn't form the words. After a few splutters and gibbers, a few words finally arrived.

"Manic? Me… think… you… dead… me… throw… chair… at… Shad… oh, my God…"

"At least it wasn't a knife rack."

"Definitely Manic." Amy knew his flavour of spontaneous, tactless wit.

"Sonic… are you crying?" Manic took a closer look. Sonic sniffed.

"Come here…" Sonic grabbed his brother and hugged him tightly. Quite tightly.

"Okay… you're not juicing melons… a little less tight, can you do that?"

"C'mere you…" Sonic grabbed Manic round the head and gave him a good hard noogie.

"Aagh! Ow! That's messing up my hair…" He let go.

"That's been waiting four years!"

"You haven't seen me for four years, and the first thing you do is give me a noogie?"

"Yeah, I'm a great brother, aren't I?" Both of them broke down laughing. Several eyebrows were raised around the room.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The group soon met up with Tails, Silver, Blaze and Diesel. The ship was too big to continue up any further. They decided to continue on foot. While Sonic and Manic recounted their escapades over the last four years, Rouge told of her encounter with Blade. Espio had a bit of explaining to do. Jet and Wave grudgingly followed with their boards tucked under their arms. Tails and Blaze lagged behind a little, talking leisurely.

"Have you ever heard of Nazo?" Blaze asked, casually.

"No. Why?" Tails found cause for concern. "Is there something we should know?"

"Well, he's a big one in the future. Nobody really knows where he's from, some say he's an alien, some say he's an ancient being from thousands of years ago… personally, I think he has something to do with Naugus."

"Anything in particular we should know about this Nazo guy?"

"He is quite powerful. He could destroy the world completely if he wanted to, but he's too sadistic to just snuff it out like that. He'd rather have the whole world suffer for thousands of years."

"How come all these villain guys are immortal?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, Eggman isn't. Sure, until Naugus came along, he was completely incompetent."

"Maybe Naugus gave him 'Villainology 101'." Blaze quipped. Tails giggled.

"Something about this doesn't feel right…" Shadow was uncertain.

"What did you say there?" Amy was the only one who heard.

"This place feels empty… like there's nothing up here."

"You mean Iggy isn't up here?"

"I don't think so. It could just be a ruse to lead us away from him or what he's doing."

"Hmm…" She retreated into her mind to think this over. Shadow remained quiet.

A massive wooden door stood in their way.

"Do you think maybe he's compensating for something?" Manic jibed.

"Stand aside." Blaze stepped forward with her ever-imposing flamethrower. The oak door burnt away in a matter of seconds. "Who needs to pick a lock when you've got a flamethrower?"

"Indeed. I've been expecting you…" A voice said through the smoke.

"Naugus!" Sonic shouted loudly as he jumped through the flames.

"There we go with the hero mentality…" Rouge rolled her eyes.

The room was a nicely furbished office, with a desk at the far side of the room. The chair was turned around to face the window, through which Sonic could see the sun nearing the horizon. The clock on the wall read 8 PM.

"You've displayed quite an impressive range of skills in getting here. None of your furry brethren have ever gotten close to where you are now."

"Cut the crap, Iggy! Show yourself!"

"Certainly brash, aren't we? It's a shame that you wasted all that energy getting here, and all in vain…" The chair swivelled round to reveal that it was empty.

"What?" Shadow jumped in through the flames. Sonic walked up to the desk.

"It's a recording!"

"Bastard…"

"But how did he know what I said?"

"Um… smart recording?"

"I realise that you may have had the curiosity to check out my desk." The recording was coming from a small box on the table. One by one, the others came in to the room, as the flames burnt themselves out. "This might be the time to inform you that your curiosity will not go unpunished."

"What?" A metal wall slammed down where the door had previously stood, much to Knuckles' alarm, as he was the last in.

"There is a bomb in my desk with a fuse of 60 seconds, starting now. It will take you at least that time to find it and open it, let alone defuse it, so don't bother trying. I doubt even your half-breed Kitsune friend could do it in that time." Tails made an expression as if to say 'What the hell is he talking about?'. "Seeing as you have precious little time to live, I might aswell let you in a little secret. It seems the batgirl did some work for me and found the pieces of the master emerald." Knuckles flared up. He turned to Rouge. He was furious.

"YOU FOUND THE MASTER EMERALD AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?!?" He grabbed her by the neck and started throttling her.

"KNUCKLES, WE HAVEN'T GOT TIME FOR THIS!" Sonic forced them apart.

"In addition, it is currently in the care of a teenage rabbit…"

"Cream!" Amy turned pale.

"…so it shouldn't be too hard to repossess."

"IF YOU TOUCH A HAIR ON HER FLUFFY BUTT I'LL SHOVE THAT EMERALD SO FAR UP YOUR ASS YOU'LL START CHOKING ON IT!"

"And once I repair the emerald, nothing can stop me ruling the world with you out of the way. I believe an evil laugh is in order. MWAHAHAHAHA…" The recording couldn't continue any further, as Shadow had put his chain through the box. Interestingly, his gun was still there and he had not transformed into 'Dark Shadow'.

"He's got a date with ol' Vengeance here…"

"Not if we don't get out!"

"I have an idea!" Knuckles yelled. He ran over, picked up the desk and tossed it out the window.

"Ah-ah-ah! Not so fast. One of you might have noticed that the desk wasn't nailed down, so I placed a second bomb in the floor. You have 60 seconds." A second recording played out.

"Oh, for fuck's sake…" Knuckles punched the wall. The open window caught Jet's eye. He ran towards it and leapt out.

"JET! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?"

"Wait, I think he's on to something…" Wave jumped out after him. Sonic watched both of them ride down the side of the building on their airboards.

"I don't suppose he could have thought of the rest of us…"

"Look. We could stay here and definitely die or jump out and probably die. Which do you want to do?" Amy suggested.

"Way ahead of you." Tails leapt out the window, back first.

"She's got a point." Manic followed. Amy, Sonic, Nack, Knuckles, Blaze and Diesel also jumped out. Espio started climbing down the outside of the building.

"Pity you don't have wings…" Rouge glided away, floating slowly to the ground. Shadow looked at the chain now hanging from his arm. He jumped out the window, and swung the chain into the wall. It scraped against it, occasionally finding a grip and slowing him down enough to put his feet on the wall.

Finally, only Silver stood at the edge. He sighed. He watched the others fall away, possibly to their deaths. He looked round to the centre of the room. The ticking got louder. It stopped. That made his mind up for him. He leapt out of the window, and heard the explosion behind him. His back felt hot. He wasn't on fire, but the gases pushed him further from the building.

About halfway down now, Sonic saw himself level with Amy. He couldn't hear a thing from the rushing of air past them. Nonetheless, they seemed to understand each other. They reached out and pulled themselves together. They were upside down and plummeting to the ground with tremendous speed, but that didn't stop them. The whole world ceased to exist for one brief moment, when the closed their eyes and kissed, one last time…


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Tails was now significantly closer to the ground than the others. He pulled a small device out of his jacket. He threw it out in front of him and it inflated. He had a reason for jumping off first. The device inflated into a raft big enough to carry all of them. The raft slowed up, and Tails fell face first into it. Manic was the next to land on it. Amy and Sonic landed on it together, with a somewhat rude awakening. Nack, Knuckles, Blaze and Diesel subsequently landed in the raft. However, they could only watch as Silver, too far away to grab hold of the raft, fell past them and away towards the ground. Tails peered over the edge, both to see what would happen to Silver, and to steer the raft to make a soft landing.

"He's dead. Nobody could survive that fall." Nack looked over, grimly. Tails' attention was grabbed, however, by the disc of light that suddenly appeared near Silver (he could barely make him out otherwise, he was too far away), and stayed there. As the raft approached the ground, everybody braced themselves for impact. The raft hit the wall as it curved outwards, and started to trail along the ground. Eventually it slid to a stop against the wall of a small shack. Tails looked up to see Silver hovering a few metres above the ground on an ethereal glowing disc. Silver looked surprised himself.

"How the…"

"I don't know, I don't know how, I don't know why, it just happened for some reason." Knuckles groped free of the half-deflated raft.

"What the… okay, I must be drunk or something…"

"Here come the gruesome twosome now…" Shadow lifted his face up to see Jet and Wave approaching on their airboards. Wave jumped off hers the moment she saw Silver. Jet saw Silver and carried on moving while staring. He promptly sailed into a wall.

Silver, perched on his little glowing disc, was confused as to how to get down. He tipped his legs forward. The disc moved accordingly. He thought. He concentrated and pushed himself forwards with force. This launched him forward and began racing round in a manner similar to Jet and Wave on their airboards.

"Where'd he go?"

"He's fucked off again!" Shadow struggled free of the remains of the raft. Moments later, Silver returned. He was at ground level now, and brought himself to a halt next to the confused and slightly frustrated Shadow.

"This is cool!" He paused. "Em… how do I get off this thing?" Tails thought for a few minutes.

"I'm gonna go on a wild assumption here. Let's say that you are, in fact, psychic, and in the few seconds before you were about to hit the ground, you concentrated so fully that you brought this disc out of your own mental energy. Just, assume that. This means that you should be able to get rid of the disc and go back to walking. Right?"

"Uh… how? Do you expect it to happen like… that…" Silver clicked his fingers in an attempt at sarcasm, when the disc disappeared and his feet landed firmly on the ground. "Ah… well, problem solved." He walked away to find something to drink, preferably something with enough alcohol to kill a yak.

As everybody else climbed free of the wreckage, Sonic and Amy stayed behind, wrapped in the fabric.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"We're not dead."

"I don't think so."

"Wanna make sure?" Even though both their eyes were closed, they knew they were next to each other. Amy felt around and found Sonic's shoulder. She aimed in the dark and found his mouth. They kissed, contently, oblivious to the outside world.

Their peace was broken when Manic dragged the raft a few metres. Muffled by the blankets of cloth, they heard:

"They're in there."

"I hope they still have pants on." Now that their game was up, they pulled the rags away. They missed the whole Silver episode, and now everybody was staring at them.

"What?"

The two of them managed to escape the prying eyes of their companions to a safe place a few hundred metres away.

"Wow." Amy pointed at the horizon. "Look at that sunset."

"Yeah… almost as pretty as you…"

"Oh, you big kidder, you…" She dismissed his rather corny compliment as their lips met again.

"Didn't Iggy say something about you being a Kitsune, or something?" Knuckles remembered the look on Tails' face.

"What? Oh, that… I don't know."

"Yeah… do you ever wonder why you have two tails?" Manic joined the fray.

"I dunno. Accidental mutation? Birth defect?"

"Or your mind-blowing intelligence?"

"Um… I got lucky?"

"Or the fact that you have no knowledge of what happened to your parents?" Tails stopped dead. He retreated into his mind.

"You still there buddy?" Knuckles waved in his face.

"You've actually got a point there. I have no idea who my parents are…" He also thought… half-breed. What could that mean?


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

"Okay. Fastest way there. Any ideas?" Nack,

"That ship we had earlier would be helpful." Diesel suggested.

"Do you wanna get it from the top of the tower?" Silver snapped. Diesel stayed quiet. "Thought not."

"Say, I thought I saw a hangar not so long ago. Back there." Wave added casually.

"Well? Are you going to stand here talking about it or go and check it out?" Jet immediately hopped on his board and took off. Wave followed.

Sitting there, eyes closed, enjoying the moment… it was perfect. Nothing could spoil this…

"Um… Sonic?" Amy opened her eyes, slightly concerned.

"Yeah?"

"What's that sound?"

"What sound?" He looked around. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Amy saw a large helicopter rise up from behind a barrier. Nack hung out of the side.

"Hey! Lovebirds! Asses in here now!" He yelled, barely audible over the engines.

"Come on!" Before Sonic had the chance to notice, Amy had gotten up and was about to jump to the chopper. She grabbed on to the edge just in time. It was beginning to take off. It had moved before Sonic had the chance to grab it. Diesel, piloting, didn't notice. The chopper began to lift off the ground. Sonic chased it a few hundred metres, as Amy hung outside it reaching for him. Just before he was about to give up, he leapt on to a box and launched himself into the air afterwards. He closed his eyes. He knew that below him was quite a fall. Do or die. Quite literally. He stretched his arm out in the vague hope of grabbing something. He sailed through the air for what seemed like an eternity. With no point of reference, it could have been any length of time.

He waited, eyes closed, arm outstretched. He thought that he must have begun to fall by now. It was stupid to attempt the jump – it must have been, what, 25? 30 metres? And over a chasm aswell. Great, he thought. I tried a last ditch effort to catch a ride and now I'm going to die. He thought he might aswell enjoy the fall, there's not much else to do. He opened his eyes. He saw the ground, instead of approaching, falling away from him. He looked up. Amy was holding his hand tightly. She looked surprised.

"What?" He said, in his usual manner. That's right, nothing out of the ordinary happened.

"Did you see that jump?" She said, as she pulled him up into the chopper.

"No, I was a little preoccupied."

"It was… like… huge!" She was genuinely stunned.

"What, how far up was it?"

"About two storeys? Maybe three? It was massive!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! How the fuck did you do it?"

"Eh… I don't know…" He looked over at Tails. "Tails, you seem to be the expert on anything and everything, what do you think happened?"

"Your guess is as good as mine…" He looked at Sonic's blank expression. "Okay, maybe not, but I still haven't got a clue." He thought a bit. "Hmm…"

"What?"

"First Shadow survived Formula T, then Silver conjures a disc out of thin air, and now this… d'you think there's something strange going on?"

"When you look at it that way…"

"So, what would be so special about S, S & S?" Amy asked.

"How's your mythology?"

"Probably not as good as yours."

"Indeed. In a lot of old hedgehog mythology, a lot of prophecies get thrown around… a couple of them are completely off the wall, but most of them seem to revolve around the same thing. They vary a bit on the details, but they all involve," He started counting with his fingers. "A malevolent being bringing about the end of the world, the master emerald, four warriors, usually hedgehogs, being the only ones that can stop him, and…" He paused.

"What?"

"The only thing that's exactly the same in every single one is the line 'and the bastard scion of two heavenly beings'. The context is sometimes inconsistent and the relevance varies, but it's in every single one that mentions all of the other things."

"Cool! I get to kick Iggy's butt!" Sonic blurted out enthusiastically.

"Well, then, who's the other one?" Amy asked.

"Hmm. A lot of time, something about a 'bloodied rose' comes up. I don't know if that might help."

Jet looked out the window.

"It's getting dark. We should hurry."

"It's going as fast as it can go!" Diesel snapped.

"Do we have radio contact yet?"

"We haven't tried for a while now… he reached for the receiver. "Calling all frequencies, please respond," He waited, listening to the static. "Please respond." He repeated, quite sternly. A voice began to crackle over the static.

"This is Freedom Fighters base, request ID," Amy rushed in and snatched the receiver off Diesel.

"Cream? Is that you? Are you there?"

"Amy?"

"Oh, God, Cream, thank God you're alive! I thought I'd lost you, you had me worried sick!" She continued poring over the receiver. Diesel rolled his eyes. When Amy and Cream had finished catching up, Cream asked to be handed back to Diesel.

"So what's your position?"

"We are… let's see… we are 15 miles west of Naugus' tower, we can just see the edge of the Roboticised landscape now,"

"ETA?"

"Hmm… 15 miles in 5 minutes… that's… 180 miles an hour… about 45 minutes." Amy took the receiver again.

"Naugus is coming for the emerald. You should hole yourself up in there pretty good. Who else have you found?"

"Uh… Big, Tikal and Chris,"

"Chri… of all the people in the base, the survivors had to include Chris? Fine. Just stay safe, okay honey?"

"Gotcha."


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

She crouched down behind the boxes. She figured that keeping hidden would be one way to keep Naugus at bay, if only briefly. She had also spread the pieces of the emerald around on the floor, which seemed to reduce their power. If the signal wasn't as strong, he would take longer finding it. Tikal sat across the way, looking towards the ceiling. Knuckles had done a good job on fixing her headband. He always had the outward appearance of a tough guy, but on the inside he was sweet like that. Big paced back and forth. Chris was amused by the contents of his shoe. Why is this kid still alive?

They heard a bang. Big ducked behind a crate. Chris wet himself. Cream peered round the edge of the box she was hiding behind. She held her gun close. The door of the warehouse finally gave way. A booted foot dropped to reveal Knuckles, behind whom Sonic, Shadow and two other figures stood. These two she didn't recognise at first. She hopped over the boxes for a better look.

"Huh? Manic? But you're…. dead aren't you? And… I've never seen you before…"

"The name's Nack, sugar, and don't you forget it." The weasel retorted irritably. Cream made her way out into the night air. She was immediately tacked by Amy with a hug.

"Easy, tiger!" She stood back a bit.

"Cream, you had me worried sick, when we lost radio contact and then we got sidetracked and we went up and down this tower and…"

"Slow down!" They paused.

"You're not hurt, are you?"

"No. I see you're okay… and as bloodstained as ever…" She laughed.

Knuckles made his way in to the warehouse.

"Tikal!" He called out, slightly worried.

"Knux-baby!" She jumped from her hiding and raced towards Knuckles. He caught her in his arms, and they spun around as they hugged. When they stopped spinning around, they kissed.

"Thank God you're okay," He whispered in her ear.

Tails looked around outside. Still no sign of Naugus. If the emerald was here, then what was taking him so long? Before he could contemplate too long, he was interrupted by a sudden wind that caught his attention. It was a cold wind, colder than the night around him. The wind grew stronger, and before long, he was beginning to struggle to stand up straight. He quickly headed for the warehouse door. At the frame, he turned around to see what the hell was going on. Over the copse, a black figure began to rise. First, a hood, then a body, then a floating pedestal. It raised itself a few metres above the ground. He stared, fixated, for several tense moments. Could nobody inside hear this? Then it spoke.

"You dare stand in my way, you filthy half-breed?" It said with pure loathing in its voice.

"Half-breed this, motherfucker…" He pulled out his shotgun and began to empty it in the stranger's direction. Each shot impacted on an invisible layer just feet away. He stepped back while he fired the next couple of shots. Nothing penetrated the shield. Finally he turned and jumped behind the crates. Everybody else, now with attention turned to this current scenario, began to hide in various parts of the room. The black figure moved unstoppably forward. The shield knocked the crates over. As Tails moved out of their way, he fell on to his back. He dropped his gun. He crawled back, unfortunately for him, on to the pieces of the master emerald. He did well to avoid putting his hand on any sharp pieces. Finally, his hand landed on one. It gave him a deep cut, which went along his forearm.

"You cannot stop me, half-breed. You would do best to stay out of my way, lest you follow your father's fate…"

This guy knows my father? He thought. He didn't move, between being backed into a corner and nursing his wound. In frustration, the black figure held out his arm. With a wave of it, he picked Tails up and hurled him across the room. He hit with the wall hard and slid to the ground.

The black figure rose up slightly and began to pick up the pieces of the emerald and they began to swirl around the room. A small vial appeared from his cloak, with a swirling yellow-grey substance in it. The cap flew off and the substance floated out of the bottle. As it contacted pieces of the emerald, they began clumping together.

"You seem shocked." He said idly. "I thought a genius, if half-breed, such as you would know that formula T is pure Chaos." Of course, Tails thought to himself. How else would it be able to fix the emerald, or how could Shadow of survived it? Amy tried to stop him by grabbing some knives and hurling them at his face. They all bounced off the shield. One however, bounced right back in her direction. She wasn't quick enough to dodge it entirely. The blade gave her a cut on the side of her face, and sailed harmlessly away. Small though it was, she fell to the ground and cried in pain. Sonic rushed over to see what was wrong. He looked at the cut. There were faint traces of glowing yellow. Formula T. He pulled her away to relative safety.

The still anonymous figure grinned to himself as he assembled the final pieces of emerald.

"Now there is nothing, nothing that can stop I…" His hood flew off to reveal his hideously aged face. "Ixus Naugus Maximus, from ruling the universe!" He cackled as he began to draw power from the whole emerald. His face began to de-age, and he was obviously growing stronger. Tails looked on with desperation. As he lay there, bleeding and losing consciousness, he managed to speak…

"No…" He uttered. He looked at his bleeding hand. Then he noticed something in his blood that hadn't seen in any of his previous injuries. In the puddle, there was a slight glow on it. He had an idea. With his unhurt hand, he dipped a finger in and flung it towards the emerald. As it came closer to the emerald, the shine grew brighter. Then it dawned on him… the bastard scion of two heavenly beings… he never knew his parents… Naugus killed his father… things began to fit. With new motivation, he struggled to his feet.

"What's this? The half-breed is still standing?" Naugus said with mocking in his voice. Tails simply smiled and closed his eyes. With no knowledge what would happen next, he concentrated with all his might. After a few moments of nothing, he began to feel the pain in his hand and from when he hit the wall disappear. He felt his feet lose contact with the ground. The cold air of the warehouse was replaced by radiant warmth. He opened his eyes to see the room filled with bright white light. He looked at himself. His black leather jacket, white t-shirt and baggy denim jeans had been replaced with just flowing white pants. God, the wind felt good on his chest fur.

"Half-breed this," He said, his voice slightly smoother than normal. He made a gesture with his hands and a bolt of lightning crashed through the roof of the building. It tore through Naugus' shield and hit the emerald square on. Instead of shattering again, it split evenly into four pieces. Knuckles cringed slightly, as the emerald, having just been repaired, was broken again. The four pieces floated around a bit, before disappearing into thin air.

"The emerald… it's gone…" Naugus stared in disbelief.

"Now it's my turn to talk some crap," Tails smiled as he moved forward, causing Naugus to retreat outside. "It's not destroyed, it's split in to four pieces and the pieces hidden. Hidden far and wide. Where you will never find them."

"YOU WILL ALL PERISH FOR YOUR INSOLENCE!" Naugus screamed, his face still aged, but not as bad as it was. He drew back and conjured a growing ball of dark energy. When it had reached a critical mass, he hurled it towards Tails, now at the front of the group. With another hand gesture, a translucent white dome appeared, encircling the entire warehouse. The energy simply crashed and dissipated at the shield. Naugus let out a cry of frustration before he vanished.


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

As Naugus disappeared, Tails sank back down to the ground. He breathed heavily. Soon he felt the chill of the night return, along with the ache in his back. His hand was fine, but his consciousness began to fade. Before long he was on his hands and knees, struggling to remain awake, and finally, he fell on his face, out cold.

When he woke, he found himself in a bed. The sheets were pulled up to his chest. He noticed he was in his underwear. The room was well lit, and appeared to be mid morning. He looked across the room to see his pants and t-shirt thrown over a chair. His jacket was hung on a coat stand. He hopped out of bed and quickly dressed himself. He left his jacket; it seemed fairly warm. He headed outside. Outside the room was a balcony which overlooked the base. It seems this part of the base emerged unscathed from the missiles. Silver was racing round the courtyard with his telekinetic disc, occasionally challenged by Jet on his airboard. Wave watched from the shade. Sonic and Amy were sitting at a table in the sun having breakfast. Knuckles and Tikal were lying on the grass nearby. Diesel was banging away at some kind of vehicle. Cream was unsuccessfully trying to get some of the consoles to work. Big was sitting in his chair, as per usual. Chris was passed out on the floor with a bump on his head. Nobody was carrying weapons. But someone was missing…

"Uh… boo?" Tails swivelled round to see Blaze standing behind him.

"Whoa… don't do that! You scared me…"

"You scared all of us a bit. Well, Chris was scared shitless, but he's usually like that, isn't he?"

"Yeah. But why?"

"The whole passing-out-and-sleeping-for-two-whole-days thing." She sat up on the wall.

"I was asleep for two days?"

"Yep. We don't know exactly why, but Knuckles says it's because you did that whole angel-ass-kicking-thing."

"What?"

"You didn't see yourself? You had these massive white wings… somebody should've taken a picture…" Tails thought. He remembered what he was thinking about the other night.

"I'm hungry. I haven't eaten in, what, three days?" He walked away looking for food.

Later on, he found a working computer. At last… he tapped away at it. It was connected to the central database. Perfect. He looked up a few of the myths & legends regarding the situation they were currently sliding towards. One jumped out at him. He read:

And whence the mage hath restored the emerald,

The world will for sure be lost

Lest yonder mage to th' just be held,

By five great ones whose might hast been must,

Two hedgehogs tainted with chaos pure

And two whose bodies are clean and pure

The bastard scion of two heavenly beings,

Father yoko and mother angel

The orphaned king shall conquer then

And yonder mage shall burn in hell.

Orphaned king? He thought. Am I royal? He looked back a bit. Yoko… that's another name for a Kitsune. That explains a bit. Then he typed into the search: vixen angels. Most of the results were links to pornography. No use. He rephrased it: female fox angels. Better. There were a couple of pages of articles, but the most viewed article was the one about Jodaina. That rings a few bells… he thought. He read it in its entirety.

Jodaina was a princess of the vulpine angel royal family, the other angel royal families being lupine, leonine, pantherine, hedgehog and echidna. She was also one of the few angels known to have actually existed. She was remained unmarried for all of her life. No, she's not the one… he thought. Wait… the bastard scion of two heavenly beings… no marriage there. He read on. She had an affair (dated to roughly 20 years ago) with the Kitsune prince (that's where the royal bit comes from, he thought) Tamakashi which produced twins, a boy and a girl, who were separated at birth. Both Tamakashi and Jodaina were murdered by a mage shortly after the birth of their two children. Mage – Naugus – not a lot of maths involved there.

Researching further, he looked up the Kitsune monarchy.

The Kitsune were the traditional rulers of the forests where the Freedom Fighters' base now stands. During the last hundred years or so, their numbers had reduced, and the family verged on extinction. The Kitsune are known to be divine beings, second only to the angels. The most recent ruling family were also the last Kitsune in existence, hence their quasi-consignment to myth. The last of them, Tamakashi, was murdered eighteen years ago by the sorcerer Ixus Naugus, who was then only just emerging from his first incarceration, five thousand years ago. That's about Tikal's time, isn't it? He thought. Though they have always been rare, but with no heirs, Kitsune are thought to be extinct.

He swung the chair back around. He was starting to have an identity crisis. This was all fitting in so perfectly… before he could think any further, he looked back up again.

"Bastard… he killed my parents… parents that I never knew…" He got up and walked away with a new fierceness in his step.


	31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31 "It's now I realise that the plan stopped at chapter 18".

The next day, Tails gathered everybody into the meeting room. It was known that a quest was afoot, but other than that it was a mystery.

"You all probably know that something big is going on." Tails addressed the room. Shadow whistled sarcastically as he played with his chain. "Naugus' appearance a few days ago was probably a giveaway to that. After a lot of thought, I have remembered where I hid the pieces of the emerald." Knuckles and Tikal perked up. "This is a vague idea, so, within a few miles. One piece is hidden in the sunken remains of Angel Island," Knuckles and Tikal were now paying very close attention. "Because of the piece of the emerald, the island is not completely submerged, there is a small piece of it poking above the water, about an acre or so. Because of all the tunnels and caverns, there are plenty of air passages in there. If a chaos emerald is brought there, or maybe two, they might be able to raise the island a bit more.

The second one is in the ruins of Metal City, south of here. It's somewhere near the middle of the city and most likely underground. There are plenty of people still living there, underground. Whoever goes there would need to be careful. The emerald itself is also being guarded by… I know this sounds weird, but… Vector." Amy looked round.

"Vector? The crocodile? Mercenary guy? I killed him!"

"He could have made some kind of deal with Naugus, where he got brought back to life, or something. I don't know. The third one is in Babylon Garden, out in the desert." Jet was immediately paying full attention, unusual for him. He got a couple of funny looks.

"Go on," He said.

"The Gardens aren't quite floating, but they are being affected by the piece of the emerald. Because it's closer to Naugus' base, he'll probably be all over that one first. The last one is... in the possession of Eggman."

"That bastard, I knew we should have killed him when we had the chance!" Shadow shouted out.

"Calm down, he's not on Naugus' side anymore. He's hiding in his polar base, to the far north. If you're nice, he might just give it to you, but he might want a trade. I suggest Shadow doesn't deal with Eggman." Shadow slouched in his chair, arms folded grumpily."

"So how do we split it? Who goes where?" Sonic asked.

"You know what I was saying about 'Four hedgehogs, blah blah blah," and all that? Well, Knuckles and Tikal should go with Sonic to Angel Island, they know it best. Espio should go to Metal City, he knows what Vector's like. Amy has also had a previous encounter with Vector, which also makes sense. Jet and Wave should accompany Shadow to Babylon Garden," Shadow cringed at the thought of journeying with the two birds. "…again, they know it best. As for Eggman's base… none of us have ever been there, so I don't know. Probably Silver, and… I don't know. We'll make up the numbers somehow."

"I'll go with Sonic. That makes four." Manic said, nearly cutting off Tails. "If Nack goes with Shadow, that makes four, if Blaze and Diesel go with Silver, that makes three, and Rouge can go with Amy, which makes three."

"So what about Tails and Cream?" Amy added. "That makes four, if you give one each."

"So where's the room for little old me?" A husky voice said from the shadows. Everybody looked round. A large bat walked into the light.

"Blade?" Rouge said, almost immediately.

"I took me a few days to get here. Harsh landscape. Sorry I'm late."

"Ahem, why were you following us?"

"Came to finish what I started. I never finished that talk I had with your little Rougey," He said with a smile. Nack glared. That's my nickname for her, he thought.

"Please, elaborate…" Tails asked, slightly concerned.

"Where did I leave off… oh yes. I heard about your encounter with Naugus. You probably figured it out for yourselves."

"Yes, Naugus wants the emerald to take over the world."

"Not only that, but he wants to remake it in his own vision. Vector was in on that. He knew more than Robotnik. He was Naugus' right hand man, almost. I should go with the pink one…"

"Amy," Amy cut in, irately.

"…to Metal City. I know Vector's ways. Two clued in heads are better than one."

"Good point. Anything you specialise in?"

"What do you think the name 'Blade', suggests?"

"Hmm. Something to do with knives?" Tails suggested. Blade nodded silently. "So that makes four, four, four, and if I go with Silver, that's four."

"What about me?" Whined Cream.

"Stay here." Amy said firmly.

"There's nothing here, the place is empty. None of the consoles work, and I want to help. I'm useless here. I can go with you, or someone else, if you feel safe with that…"

"You can tag along with us."

"Sounds good." Cream was just excited to be taken on a mission. Probably best that it's with a friend, like Tails, she thought. Amy still looked unsure. "Come on…"

"Okay. You can go with Tails." She looked at Tails. "Take good care of her, Tails."

"Jesus Christ, Amy, I'm not six, I can take some care of myself."

"You're sixteen."

"So? Where were you when you were sixteen? Or, where was Sonic when he was sixteen? Saving the frickin' world!" Cream continued to argue. Sonic smiled. "And Tails is like, eighteen? Not much difference there!" Silver sank his head into his hands.

"Good Lord, I'm babysitting…"


	32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

The four groups set off on their separate ways the next morning. Sonic headed north via the high-speed tunnels that, though crumbling, were still serviceable. Shadow had to trek across the desert. Amy, by comparison, had much more benign terrain to travel through, and some of the roads to Metal City were still intact. Silver had no choice but to fly to the North Pole, as Boreala was cut off from the main landmass.

Before they left, Sonic and Amy met in secret, behind a pile of crates. As soon as they knew that nobody was around, they started kissing.

"I'm gonna miss you," Sonic said in between kisses.

"Likewise," Amy managed while trying to take a breath.

"When can we see each other again?"

"I don't know,"

"I'll keep in touch every day,"

"Please, do…"

After about half an hour, they returned.

"Is it any surprise who's late?" Shadow said cynically.

"Fuck off, Shads," Sonic said, fixing his collar. He looked around at some of the costume changes. Manic had ditched his long leather coat for a white vest. Tikal had borrowed some of Amy's pants. Shadow was still open-chested, to accommodate the chain. Nack had a shorter leather jacket, but still had the fedora. Jet was still wearing the My Chemical Romance t-shirt. Amy was wearing some heavier clothes to her normal attire. Blade was still as leather-draped as ever.

"So… meet back here in a week?" Silver asked casually.

"Depends how long it takes. Could be longer." Knuckles answered.

"Won't if I've got anything to do with it." Rouge mumbled, inspecting her hand. Tails looked at the sun. He checked his watch. 9:47.

"We'd better get going if we want to make tracks before nightfall."

"So… bye everybody?" Manic said. Sonic poked him. "Hey, don't poke me… stop that… if you're gonna be doing that for the whole trip I'll…"

Sonic took a hovercar to the tunnel entrance, going through the northern part of the base and through part of the forest. Manic looked out while Sonic drove.

"Where the hell is everybody?"

"We don't know. This place should be bustling."

"They could have gone into the catacombs,"

"Catacombs?" Sonic nearly took his eyes off the road.

"I didn't know there were catacombs underneath the city," Manic added, turning around in his seat.

"The Kitsune built them when they built the city originally. The base is built on top of the centre of their capital, Seyanoda. The catacombs were used for any number of reasons, secret gatherings, moving around, or as bunkers in times of emergency. They pretty much went into disuse about a thousand years ago, but you can still see the evidence all over the place. Every so often, bricks will have markings on them, indicating that there's a passage behind them. People could have gone into hiding."

"Surely not everybody…"

"Well, some of them, perhaps."

"What happened to the rest?" Tikal inquired, sounding concerned.

"No idea." Sonic said bluntly, concentrating on the road again.

Sonic had become somewhat frustrated when learning to drive, because he was upset about not being able to run as fast as he used to. When he turned 19, he found that when he tried to run too fast, his weight overcame him and his legs buckled. He was still able to run fairly fast (70 MPH – still faster than most living things), but as he grew, it became easier to use vehicles. By the time he was 25, he could only top 35 MPH. Shadow, Amy and Manic had become subject to the same kind of thing, although to a lesser extent as they couldn't run as fast to start with.

"I suppose it's kinda like Sally Acorn's disappearance a few years ago, isn't it?" Knuckles added.

"Possible. Anyone ever find out what happened to her?" Manic mused.

"Nope." Sonic said, again, bluntly.

As they neared a cliff face, a sign read: "Now leaving Seanote City – drive safe". Sonic smiled. Driving safe is the least of my worries right now, he thought.

"Is this the tunnel?" Tikal asked innocently.

"No. We have to go through the forest. It'll probably take another half an hour." Manic looked at the speedometer. Tikal sank back into her seat. She turned and leant against Knuckles.

"Try to keep up," Jet and Wave teased Shadow with their airboards.

"When I catch you…"

"If, Shady, if…" Wave teased.

"Ooh… now you're asking for it…" He knelt down and started fiddling with his boots. With a smile he pushed himself up and started running again. He leapt into the air over a crevasse and hit the boots. Before he was about to fall, two streams of air shot out of the boots and propelled Shadow to the far side. Jet and Wave looked back with awe as Shadow rapidly caught up to them and started swinging his chain. Jet gulped and pressed forward. After racing for a good twenty minutes, Shadow slowed down.

"Uh… where's Nack?" He called out. Jet looked puzzled, but kept going. Jet and Wave continued next to an outcrop of rocks. Shadow saw a dust cloud in the distance. He watched as it moved closer to the outcrop. It moved onto it, and by now he could see that at the centre of it there was something shiny. The cloud sailed off the outcrop just in front of Jet and Wave. It continued round and stopped in front of them. The two of them stopped dead. Shadow approached casually. In front of them was Nack, with dark sunglasses, on a motorbike. "There's Nack." Shadow said, passing by and accelerating away. Jet and Wave jumped back onto their boards and followed him. Nack revved the engine and took off after them. 'How does that hat stay on his head?' Shadow thought.

The continent at the North Pole of Mobius, similar to Earth's Antarctica, only on the north side of the planet.


	33. Chapter 33

A/N: Erk…. Short chapter alert! Don't worry, this is a once off.

Chapter 33

Rouge drove. Or, nearly drove, the cruise control was on. Amy sat in the passenger seat, legs up on the dash, head in arms, sleeping. Espio meditated. Blade hid from the sun behind his wings, sharpening his dagger. It was a sunny afternoon, and the road was warm. The hover car glided effortlessly over the cracks that would easily halt a wheeled vehicle, especially at these speeds – Rouge checked the speedometer. 300 MPH. Wouldn't want to hit something at that speed. She turned round in her seat and decided to talk to Blade.

"You look a little sunburnt there," She said, not meaning it, but just as a conversation starter.

"Don't you have a road to keep an eye on?" His gruff voice emitted from behind his black wings.

"Oh, don't be so shy…" She lifted one of the wings away with her finger.

"You don't give up, do you?" He smiled slightly.

"Look, there… you're laughing aren't you?" Blade chuckled a bit.

"Well, you are kinda funny,"

"In what way?" She leant on her arms slightly, squeezing her breasts together. Blade stared at her cleavage. She knew this. She left him staring for a moment, to test his reaction. Finally, she said: "Oh, grow up," and turned back to see where they were going.

"No, wait…" He reached out from behind his wings.

"Uh-uh, had enough…" She said, smiling and trying not to laugh. Lucky for her she was sober at the time. Blade sank back down, also smiling. She'll come around, he thought.

"Hey, sleepy-head, wake up," Rouge shoved Amy awake. "We're here."

"Go away," She said, still half asleep. "I wanna stay in bed with Son…" She opened her eyes. Rouge, Blade and Espio were staring. She sat up and shook it off. "We're here already?"

"It was only two hours' drive, there wasn't really much in the way of traffic," Rouge said cynically.

"I can imagine," Amy replied, vaulting out of the car and grabbing her weapons.

They had stopped at the edge of Metal City, right at the gates. They couldn't use the car any further, as there seemed to be no way in without climbing up. Rouge and Blade flew up, no problem. Espio had no trouble climbing up. Amy called from the bottom:

"You guys scout ahead, I'll climb… this… big, fucking wall…" She proceeded to climb up.

By the time she reached the top, the others were a long way off. She pulled her MP3 player out of her pocket. She pressed play as she popped a headphone into her ear. The opening notes of Crawling played out. She adjusted the volume and pressed on. She entered out on to a balcony overlooking the main road into the city. She walked up to the rail, gazing out over the street and the buildings. She dropped her sword and fell to her knees. A tear came to her eye. Never had she seen such a scene of desolation, of ruin… she never thought this could have happened to the city she grew up in, her city…

The first chorus came on.

_Crawling in my skin,  
These wounds they will not heal,  
Fear is how I fall,  
Confusing what is real, ooooh…_

This was going to be a long trip.


	34. Chapter 34

A/N: Eek! Another short chapter! D: Don't worry, this should be the last of the short chapters. I try to keep to a 2 A4 page average at Tahoma size 12. And why is everyone so flippin quiet? 2 Reviews (both anonymous) after 3 months? Length can't be that much of a deterrent to readers. If you're stuck for online time, select all (Ctrl+A) copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) into a document on your computer and read offline at your leisure!

Chapter 34

Blaze paced back and forth around the back of the plane. She didn't have a good reason for being impatient, other than she was bored. She threw her gloves on the ground and fished her iPod out of her jacket. Half battery – better save it for later. She put it back.

"Need a charger?" Tails said from his seat across the way.

"I thought you were asleep." Blaze responded.

"I was, but it's hard to stay sleeping for long on a plane like this." He banged the interior of the metal fuselage of the plane with his fist. Blaze raised an eyebrow.

"Silver's out cold." She pointed at Silver, sprawled out across three chairs and sound asleep. "So what was this you said about a charger?"

"There might be one in my pack, over there." He pointed at the heavy brown backpack. "I keep finding all kinds of stuff in there." Blaze opened the top and threw some stuff out on the floor. "Hey, don't take everything out!" Tails got up and started sorting through the assorted objects on the floor. Quite a few guns and ammunition, but plenty of other things aswell. Blaze tipped some more stuff out onto the floor. A ball of wires fell out. "It's probably in there," Both of them began to untangle the cords.

"That looks like the one…" Blaze took the end of one and started pulling it away.

"This plug has the Apple logo on it…" Tails pulled the wires away from one plug. They continued to untangle the wires until just the one was left. To make sure it wasn't still tangled, they ran their hands along the wire. They met in the middle. Tails accidentally put his hand on top of Blaze's. They stared, first at their hands, then at each other. Tails quickly took his hand away. "Oh, eh… sorry, I…"

"No, I… um…"

They both stopped talking, blushing under their fur.

"Come on, you can't be a Superbike champion from your time! We don't even have that now, in the middle of a war, so why would they have it in a situation as desperate as yours?" Cream said cynically.

"Okay, I made up that bit, but I'm still pretty damn good with motorbikes!" Diesel conceded his tall tale.

"Oh yeah?"

"BMW sponsorship, baby." He lifted his jacket to reveal the BMW logo on his t-shirt.

"You're travelling back in time and you're still being used as a walking billboard?" Cream shouted in disbelief.

"Now that I didn't make up." He replied proudly. "So… this your first time this far away from home?"

"Yeah,"

"Never been this far on, vacation or anything?"

"Well… I never really went on vacation…"

"Oh?" He said, with genuine concern.

"See… I don't remember much, but I do know that they rescued me from Metal City before it was attacked. I must have been… what, six? Maybe Seven? But, even though I got away, my parents didn't…"

"Aww…" Diesel turned away from the controls of the plane and hugged Cream. A few seconds later, she said in a slightly concerned way:

"Um… Diesel? The plane?"

"Oh, right…" He turned, flustered, back to the controls. "But go on."

"Well… since then, Amy's been kinda like a Mom to me, so you can understand if she gets a bit protective sometimes, right?"

"Mmm-hm." He raised an eyebrow. More like psycho, he thought.

"But because I was in the care of a… ahem… 14-year-old, we didn't really get time for vacations. Although there was this one time…" She began to stare into space. "Big took us out to the forest, and we had a picnic…" She was completely self-absorbed at this point, lost in her own fond memories. Diesel just stared. Mad woman, he thought. She eventually sighed and asked him if he had ever been anywhere nice.


	35. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

The car left the tunnel at high speed. The light blinded everybody for a second, but then the verdant forest came into focus.

"Should only be twenty minutes, now…" Manic said optimistically.

"Em… not to worry you, but it might be a little longer…" Sonic said, pointing at the obstruction ahead. He pulled the car up next to a sign that said, 'unstable bridge, take detour'. The river looked impassable from all visible sides. "Shit." He muttered under his breath, as he vaulted out of the car. He inspected the bridge ahead. It looked fine. Knuckles got out to join him. Manic looked around. He spotted something suspicious in the trees. He squinted to try and make it out. As soon as he saw what it was, it was too late.

"Uh… guys? I think we've got a AAGH!" Something dropped from the treetops and grabbed him by the neck. As quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared again, with Manic.

"Where'd he goAAAGH!" Sonic turned around to find that Knuckles had disappeared.

"Knux-baby? Where'd you go? DyaAAAH!" Tikal was picked right out of her seat. Sonic panicked slightly. He backed up to the sign.

"What… Who are you? Show yourselves!" He looked up. Something dropped down from the trees and grabbed him. "Wha… hey! What the fuck?" He struggled fruitlessly.

"Don't hurt them, I want to talk to them. The blue one in particular." He heard a voice say. It was a female voice, soft yet strong. He opened his eyes. A vixen stood there with a bow slung over her shoulder. She was wearing clothes crafted from leaves and other green materials. Then he noticed something. She had two Tails and bright blue eyes. He looked around. They were in the treetops. There were several other foxes around, with anything from three to six tails.

"Tell me. What is your business here?"

"We were just passing through, honest," Sonic replied innocently.

"You looked kind of… glazed over, there, a minute ago. Never seen a Kitsune before?"

"No!" Manic shouted out. The guard restraining him hit him.

"Um… actually… yes, kind of…" The vixen raised her eyebrow.

"Oh? How so?"

"Well… one of our friends…"

"There's more of you? Where?"

"They're not in the forest,"

"Well that's okay. But anyway, this… friend?"

"Well he's… a fox, with two tails… heh… that's why we call him 'Tails'."

When she heard this, she stared into space slightly. She shook her head and regained her concentration.

"Where is he?"

"Why should I tell you that?"

"Because I'll start ripping your spines out if you don't." She hit him across the face. It hurt.

"Okay… aagh… he should be over Angel Island by now,"

"He's on Angel Island?"

"No, over it, he's on a plane,"

"To where?"

"Boreala. Robotnik's base."

"Why?" She fired off more questions as quick as Sonic had answered the previous one.

"To retrieve a piece of the master emerald."

"A piece? I thought it was shattered into thousands,"

"Well, it was found, Naugus put it back together, and then Tails did some freaky angel-thing and he beat Naugus away, and he broke the emerald into four pieces and hid them."

"Quite a mouthful, wasn't that? Where are the other pieces?"

"Well, we were on our way to find another one of them on Angel Island, one is in Babylon Garden, and the other is in Metal City." Manic cringed as Sonic spilled every single detail to a bunch of unknowns.

"Are you planning to retrieve them?"

"Of course, there are two other parties heading out to get them."

"And who are you working for? Hmm?"

"Well… we're not really working for anybody right now, since the freedom fighters base was attacked… again…"

"I said who are you working for,"

"And I said, nobody,"

"ANSWER ME, GODDAMNIT!" She hit Sonic again.

"Ow… we're fighting against Naugus, if that's what you want to hear…"

"Good. Then we're on the same side. What about Robotnik?"

"Last time we checked, he washed his hands of the situation a week ago,"

"I see. And Nazo?"

"Who?"

"Nazo. I assume that if you are fully abreast of the situation that you know about Nazo?"

"No. Never heard of him."

"Oh, we must fill you in. Do you at least know about the prophecy?"

"Um… yes…ish. That the one about four hedgehogs, and stuff?" She nodded. "Yeah. Tails filled us in. He seems to know a lot about this kind of thing."

"How many of you are there?"

"Four… four… five… seventeen in total. That we know of."

"Small team for saving the world." She turned to the guards. "Release them." Manic panicked, before realising that he was being let down onto a walkway. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"So who are you guys?" He asked, checking he still had everything.

"I am Nailei. As you might have noticed, we are kitsune."

"I thought the Kitsune were extinct," Knuckles pointed out.

"You thought wrong, then, Echidna. The royal kitsune of Seyanoda are extinct, not the entire race. I would have thought the guardian of the master emerald would have been better informed. And, by the way, if the emerald was stolen and shattered, then you mustn't have been doing a very good job…" She said as she walked away. Knuckles was furious.


	36. Chapter 36

Chapter 36

The sun began to near the horizon behind them. At the same time, a large object neared the horizon in front of them. This was good, as they were nearing their goal. Nack checked his fuel gauge. Just enough to get there. As they got even closer to it, Jet could pick out familiar details. The walls, the tower (albeit with a chunk missing), the central palace was only just visible.

"Aaah…" He sighed warmly. "Babylon garden…"

"Don't get too comfortable." Shadow gave him a shove. "Don't get all sentimental when we get in there, we need to use you as a map."

"Fine," He grumbled.

Gaining entrance was not a problem; the entire floating island was on its side in the middle of the desert, meaning they could just ride on. They stopped in the middle of the central plaza.

"Just as well," Nack tapped the gauge. "Out of gas," He unceremoniously dumped the bike on its side. He stumbled slightly. "Whoa… incline."

"Yeah, be careful with that." Wave added casually.

"Hey, what's up with Shadow?" Shadow had fallen to his knees and was seemingly unresponsive. Jet poked him.

"Don't… poke… me…" He seethed. Jet took a step back.

"What's up? D'you wanna hand or something?" Suddenly, Shadow disappeared from sight, but a trail of glowing yellow betrayed his path. It led away from them, up to the edge of the square, and then back down. Wave turned around to see Shadow behind her, breathing heavily and quickly, and he appeared to be slightly blurred. Um… Shadow? What's happened to you?" He didn't respond. He moved his head with rapid, jerky movements. Suddenly, he vanished again, only to reappear sprawled on the ground about twenty yards up from them. The blur had vanished and he was moving normally. He picked himself up off the floor.

"Ugh… what just happened?"

"We were kinda hoping that you could tell us,"

"Well… it's like, all of a sudden, there was something gripping inside me, and then, when it let go, everything had a kind of… yellow… screen on it, or something, and you guys were all moving really slowly. It must have been like that for, what, five, maybe ten minutes?"

"Really? To us it was only 30 seconds."

"Ah." Nack looked like he had come up with something. "I think you might have encountered another one of your powers,"

"The first one being?"

"Well… not only surviving the T stuff, but coming out with a new weapon at your disposal. Now you can bend time aswell."

"Cool. I think I also got a hint as to where we need to go."

"Oh yeah? Where?" Jet asked impatiently.

"Down. It's somewhere down below, way below. It was like a secret tunnel, or something."

"Right. Unless they've redesigned the place since I was last here, we have to go through the palace to the public baths, where we can get access to the maintenance tunnels. There we should be able to get anywhere." Jet listed methodically.

"Well? What are we waiting for?" Wave jumped onto her board and through the west doorway, the wooden doors themselves lying in pieces along the wall. Jet followed, and Shadow soon joined them. Nack was left standing there.

"I have got to get me one of those things," He said as he ran after them. He skidded to a halt as something caught his eye. "He-lo…" He walked into a room that said 'Extreme Gear'.

"Try to keep up, Shads," Jet teased as he rounded another corner.

"Try not to piss me off enough that I use your neck as a grappling hook," He retorted.

"Guys… how long have we been at this?" Wave asked, concerned. Shadow looked at his watch.

"According to this it's still 5:30. Frigging slow watch…"

"No, your watch is right, it's just that we've gone east three or four time zones, so it's later here."

"Still, we should probably stop racing and start finding a way down?"

"But racing is fun!" Jet complained.

"The woman said STOP RACING!" Shadow yelled as he kicked Jet from his board. Jet flew a few metres before landing on the ground hard. He skidded about a hundred metres before stopping at a rock. He was bleeding from his beak. Wave stopped next to Jet and had a look at him. As soon as she was sure that he was okay, she turned back to Shadow, who had stopped fifty metres behind them.

"Shadow, what the fuck? What was all that about? You could have kicked him into a torch, or something sharp, you could have killed him!"

"I apologise for nothing!" He called back.

"Bastard…"

"Oy, what happened to him?" Nack stopped next to Jet and Wave on an airbike."

"Where'd you find that?"

"Just lying around." He hopped off. "I believe we have some places to be?"

"So who wants to drag Jet?"

"I call not it!" Shadow said playfully as he ran up to join them.

"If anything, you deserve to carry him because you nearly killed him!"

"You're going to trust him to the guy with a weed-whacker for an arm?"

"Good point."

"Strap him on his board and tow the board."

"Hmm. Good idea, Nack. Shadow, go find his board."

Shadow grumbled as he walked away.


	37. Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Amy had recomposed herself and set off after the others. Walking through the streets brought back memories, mostly good ones. There was the old candy store… and the toy store was right over there… it must have been, what, ten years now? She stopped. Ten years. Ten long years. Now it came back. The attack was on the 18th September. Ten years ago in a week. She tightened her grip on her weapons. She struck out with her hammer at the first thing she saw. She opened her eyes to see the head of the hammer lodged in a fallen lamppost. She pulled it out and continued on. Save that kind of force for the enemy, she thought.

She rounded a corner to the edge of the park. The park had survived mostly intact. The sun shone in the blue sky over the swings, one of which Rouge was sitting on. They must have been quite well-built to survive a battleship attack and ten years of neglect. Cream used to play on those swings all the time… she shook herself off before she got too sentimental. I'm on a mission, Dammit, she thought.

"Nice of you to show up," Espio called from the tree, snidely.

"Nice of you to wait for me." She called back equally snidely.

"So what's the plan?" Rouge asked, kicking the ground lightly. Amy thought.

"We should probably find signs of life, so, like, where things have been disturb…" She stopped. She wheeled around. Suddenly she swung herself back and swung her sword up in the air in front of her. Metal clanged on metal as she hit a flying dagger out of the air. She hit the ground on her back, but quickly got up again. She looked over at where it had come from. There was a masked individual sitting on a grassy knoll. He ducked back away. Amy ran towards him. Rouge jumped off the swing and pulled out her whip. She saved the gun for later. Espio acrobatically jumped through the air towards him. But where was Blade?

As she vaulted over the brow, she was met by four long swords. She stopped for a second, before dropping to the ground and rolling away. She flung her sword towards one of them. He deflected it away with his own sword. Hmm. These ones might be a challenge. She rushed back to them with her hammer raised. The sheer force of the hammer was enough to smash one face in. As she pulled out, the blood spurted onto her face. There wasn't anything particularly unusual about that, but this time, for some reason, it felt good. Rouge had paused at the brow of the hill, watching the carnage. Amy could handle herself, and she didn't want to tire herself out. Amy ducked and rolled under the legs of the second masked person. She stuck the back of the hammer into his stomach and kicked him away. He fell onto it, driving it deeper into his gut. Amy pulled out the quarterstaff as she jumped up.

She narrowly avoided the swing of a sword, and on the rebound thrust one end of it into the owners' torso. He stumbled back, winded. She continued jabbing a few times, before swinging the staff around and knocking his legs out from under him. As he fell, she caught his sword. She stabbed him in the back of the neck. She dropped the staff to engage the last one with just the sword. She attacked only to be met with a block. Her opponent struck back, again, only to be met with a block. They duelled for several minutes before Amy made a small mistake – the masked individual managed land a strike to her left shoulder, only partially blocked. As he drew the sword away, Amy groaned as it left a cut. With renewed anger, she rolled aside and got a slice into his neck. The clothing was stripped away and the blade severed his jugular. Amy seemed fixated by this. When the body was about to fall, she grabbed it, to continue staring at the bleeding neck. She dropped her sword. To everyone's shock, including her own, she sank her teeth into the neck and began to drink the spurting blood.

She dropped onto the hillside, now oblivious to the world around her. She was completely absorbed by what she was now doing. She had tasted blood before – fighting with melee weapons is a messy business – but never like this. No matter how much she got, it wasn't enough. There was this strange new feeling she was having, a pleasurable one, almost sexual in nature. She licked every last drop she could out of the wound, before getting up to inspect her work. The carcass was paler now, and the wound had stopped bleeding, both most likely because of lack of blood pressure. She was breathing heavily – she was so excited. When she looked up, she saw the expressions of pure horror on the other's faces. Rouge, still looking at her, pawed at her own mouth, as if to say that Amy had something there. Amy put her hand up to her mouth. She noticed that it was hanging open, such was the extent to which she was caught up in the heat of the moment. Her face was dripping with blood, but also…

"Those weren't there before…" She felt around her front teeth. She ran her fingers up and down these two new features; sharp, smooth, and ever so slightly tingly. She had fangs. Big ones. "What the hell?" She began to check herself for anything else unusual. Nothing visible. She went to jump up on to the knoll again, but cleared the height in one bound. Then she noticed – she felt phenomenal. She sprinted to the swings. She hadn't run at that speed for years. She jumped up to the top of them and leapt to the nearby tree in a single leap. She swung from the branches, anything in an attempt to find the limits of her newfound power. She swung away, involuntarily. Her arms suddenly began to ache. While in mid-air, she felt her mouth again. The fangs had disappeared. Then it hit her – or rather, she hit it. The ground. She landed face first on the dusty ground a few metres from the tree, and went unconscious almost immediately.


	38. Chapter 38

A/N: Woooooops! ; I completely forgot this existed. Sorry about the approx. 55 day delay on the new chapter, I got distracted by various other projects... well, here it is... please don't kill me...

Chapter 38

Diesel spied the edge of land on the horizon. He reached for the mike.

"Okay, folks, we're nearly there, please fasten your seatbelts for landing, keep all hands, legs and other appendages inside the plane and stash any weapons in the overhead compartments." He could hear giggling from the passenger section.

Tails came up to the bridge. Silver followed, rubbing his eyes.

"What's going on?" He yawned.

"Got land in sight." Diesel replied.

"Don't land just yet. We need to see what's there." A light beeped on the control panel.

"Incoming transmission."

"Put it on the screen." The screen flickered into life.

"Well well well… what have we here?"

"Eggman…"

"Come crawling back, have we?"

"We did a favour for you, it's time you did a favour for us."

"No, I did a favour for you in giving you that short cut."

"You seemed pretty desperate when we found you."

"Hmm. State your terms."

"You have a piece of the master emerald, correct?"

"How did you know?"

"That's not important now. We need that piece."

"Well… it's going to be a little harder to get it off me, seeing as this time you're not pointing a shotgun to my head. What do I get in return?"

"You get… well…" Tails thought for a second. "How does safety in the knowledge that the world won't be destroyed by Naugus sound?"

"Ho ho… even though the destruction of the world is indeed a tempting idea, I must say that in this particular case it would be best left unsullied. Although I must say, Ixus will find it rather difficult to summon Nazo with only three quarters of the emerald,"

"Nazo? What?"

"Whoops, I said too much. The bottom line is that you'll have to prise it from my cold dead hands, and so will Naugus if he wants it that badly. Good day to you," The screen went black.

"Fine. We'll have to do this the hard way." Tails looked out over the landscape. "I see some buildings."

"Of course, it would make sense for Eggman's ships to do as little flying in polar climates as possible, so they must land there and go on land to the hub at the pole,"

"Silver, how did you know that?"

"This base is still here 200 years later, we've possessed it ourselves. I live here in the future."

Tails raised an eyebrow.

"Well, that will definitely make things easier." Diesel set down the plane.

Stepping out into the cold with thick coats on, the group made their way forwards to the entrance. It wasn't guarded, or even locked, but the inside was still fairly cold. They breathed easy in the belief that they would be relatively safe for most of the journey. Their peace was broken by two shots that whizzed over there heads. They ducked but they were unfortunate enough to be caught out with no cover.

"We are FUCKED!" Cream said under her breath. Another hail of bullets came towards them. Silver looked forward. The robots braced to fire another shot. As they fired, Silver threw himself straight up with seemingly no effort. He held his hand out in front of himself.

"Silver, NO!" Blaze shouted. A mere instant before the bullets would have impacted, they stopped in midair in front of him. He remained like that for a few moments. The bullets floated aimlessly in mid-air. A few light objects nearby began to move around slightly. Then, with a hand gesture, the bullets shot straight back to the robots. A couple of things at the sides of the walls were sent a metre or two. The first wave of robots fell. The second wave charged forward. These were, instead of the cheap, Naugus-sponsored SIPR-series, the more advanced E-series, developed more since the original takeover. They were sturdier than their predecessors, and more intelligent. They were very unlikely to charge mindlessly in the general direction of an enemy only to walk off a cliff, a common glitch in earlier models.

Silver simply ran towards the advancing robots with equal speed. The robots outstretched their weapons. Silver stopped short of one and ducked down. The robot seemed to carry on on an invisible ramp over him and landed a few metres away. He threw a few more robots to one side or another psychically, and the last two he threw away from him. As they began to regroup, he decided to have some fun. He picked up the one that had run over him and scraped it along the walls. He began to smash it into the other ones, turning them to scrap. He carried on until they were little more than debris. As he was about to smash the pile of scrap metal into the wall another time, he suddenly blacked out and collapsed. The metal fell to the ground, unsupported.


	39. Chapter 39

Chapter 39

"So, Nailei, you seemed very interested when I was talking about Tails," Sonic had caught Nailei relaxing in the shade of a tree. Knuckles and Tikal were sitting in a canopy, drinking some of the local drinks. Manic was trying and failing to beat a Kitsune warrior in hand-to-hand training combat.

"Yes… well, you see, when I was growing up out here, I was an orphan, but I did know this; I had a twin brother, and we were separated at birth. I didn't know where he was or even what he looked like, but I vowed to find him some day…"

"And you think he might be Tails?"

"Well, you said he had two tails, and none of the kitsune here has any less than three. It was logical assumption. Oh, and what's his real name?"

"Um… Miles, Miles Prower…"

"Why don't you call him that?"

"I don't know, I suppose it's just the nickname we use for him." Nailei's attention flicked over to Manic being flipped over the warrior's back. She laughed.

"The green one's funny,"

"Yeah? He's my brother,"

"Is he?" She watched as Manic kicked the warrior between the legs and he doubled over. They could hear him shout:

"All right! Nutshot!"

"So, why have we not noticed you out here before?" Sonic turned his attention back to the conversation.

"We preferred to keep ourselves secret."

"Why? By the looks of it I'd say you could have been a huge help,"

"I… I thought that we would be wiped out if we got involved too heavily,"

"With the quality of training these guys have, I'd say you'd be in no danger. But that's not really important. We need to get to the piece of the emerald."

"Yes. How are you planning to do that?"

"There are some old high-speed tunnels north of here that can speed us to the coast off the island, and then we can try and make our way to the island itself and we can search then."

"How far are the tunnels?"

"About… forty miles?"

"Brisk walking should take about a day, but we might be able to go faster by treetop,"

"We have a car, we can cover it in half an hour."

"Oh. Right. That saves you some time,"

"Oh yeah, it's a hovercar aswell, so we can drive across the water to the island."

"This… car… it's very useful, isn't it?"

"Yes…" Sonic moved away from Nailei slightly.

"All set?" Knuckles asked as he lugged a bag of supplies into the trunk.

"Yep." Manic replied cheerfully.

"Wait," Nailei called after them.

"What?"

"I want to come with you."

"You what?" Knuckles said in disbelief.

"I want to help you with your quest,"

"Um… thanks, help would be appreciated," Sonic was slightly flustered. "But… how are you going to fit in the car?"

"We can squeeze in,"

"We? What do you mean we?" Manic was now concerned.

"I wouldn't go anywhere without my most trusted warrior," she added as a bulky kitsune came forward. It was the same one whom Manic was fighting earlier. Manic gulped. "This is Jakavi, and I trust him with my life."

"Yeah, sure… not sure I'd trust him with mine, though…" Manic quipped. Jakavi grinned slightly.

"Don't worry, I won't try to beat the tar out of you… much…" He replied. Manic gulped again.

"Oh, stop it, Jak. We'd better get moving." She jumped into the back of the car gracefully, with her tails fluttering in the air. She nestled in next to Tikal. Sonic popped the boot.

"Hey Jak, get hold of something in there, it should be big enough," It was – just.

Nailei said goodbye to her tribe and they left. Sure enough, only half an hour later they had arrived at the tunnel. Sonic stopped next to the edge of the entrance. The entrance lay in a deep pit, and the elevator down had long since ceased to function.

"So who wants to find a way down?" Manic asked, peering over the edge. Nailei, to everyone's surprise, vaulted over the guardrail and let go. However, before she let go, she had tied a rope to it and began abseiling down the side of the wall. Jakavi followed. Knuckles raised an eyebrow, but decided to follow them. Tikal and Manic followed him. Sonic was the last to descend. His shoe got caught on the rope, and he took a few minutes to free himself. By the time he was free, the others had reached the bottom; Manic was just putting the rope down as he looked down. It was a long way down – wouldn't want to fall. As he descended, he heard an unwelcome sliding sound. He looked up to see the knot slowly unravelling. He redoubled his pace, but it was too late. The knot gave way, and Sonic felt himself leaving the surface of the wall. He closed his eyes rather than watch the ground close in. He howled in pain as he slammed against the wall on the way down. He slid to a halt on what he thought was the ground. He daren't move, instead waiting for death to come.

A few minutes later, he heard someone calling to him.

"Sonic! Are you okay?"

"What?" He groaned, pushing himself up. He looked around. It looked like the tunnel entrance, but something was odd about it. He looked straight towards his feet. Sure enough, the feet are still there… but what's that over there? He sat up to try and see the background better. Where there should have been a wall, he saw the edges of treetops and clear blue sky. He got up and turned around. On the other wall he saw some rubble, and… the others, standing there looking at him.

"Hello? Sonic?"

"Yeah, I'm fine…" He continued to observe his surroundings. He walked around a bit, exploring his current gravitational circumstances. He pulled some fluff out of his pocket and let it go. It fell, to him anyway, sideways away from him towards the others. "What the hell?" He walked towards the others. When he was about a few metres from the wall, or floor depending on the point of view, he stopped. "What the hell just happened?"

"Um… I'm gonna tell it like it is," Manic started. "You're walking on the wall."

"Say what?"

"Yeah. You're walking on the wall."

"Hmm?" Sonic walked down to join them, now standing in the same direction as them.

"This is really freaking me out…" Knuckles added.

"I suppose I'd better go get the car," Sonic smiled, and he set off walking back up the wall and up to the top. Nailei was simultaneously astonished and relieved. Manic noticed this.

"You look like you know something. Care to explain a little?"

"Well…" She began.


	40. Chapter 40

A/N: Oops! Left the updating a loooong time. Well here's the next 2 chapters, including an extra long one to compensate. Reviews anyone?

* * *

Chapter 40

"Pretty nice palace you got here," Shadow mentioned as he towed the board with Jet tied on to it. They had decreased in pace, partly to get a sense of direction.

"Ugh… what hit me?"

"That would be Shadow's foot." Wave replied, glaring at Shadow.

"What? Why the fuck did you do that? And why am I tied down?"

"To speed things along." Nack stopped. "Now get him off and let him ride himself, then we can move a bit faster."

"Good idea."

"Hey… hold up a sec. We're in the throne room…" Jet gazed out over the large room. On the other side, there was an elaborately decorated chair, mostly gold and jewels. He pulled the ropes away and jumped on his board. He flew over to it to inspect it. He stopped at it, and threw his board aside. He went over to inspect the throne. He examined it very thoroughly, and poked around at some of the jewels. Then he stopped dead. He stood there for a few moments.

"Uh… Jet?" Wave called over. "Are you okay?" Jet straightened up. He didn't respond verbally; instead he ran over to his board and jumped on it immediately. He raced into a doorway under the others, and showed no signs of turning back.

"Well, best follow him…" Shadow leapt over the edge and followed him, followed himself by Wave and Nack.

"Damn, he's fast,"

"Well, duh, he's the Extreme Gear world champion 8 times, with 4 in a row,"

"There's no way we're gonna catch him at this rate. We need another way to the emerald." Nack said as he looked over at Shadow.

"What? Why are you looking at me?"

"Well, you seem to have more than your fair share of tricks up your sleeve,"

"Well, not to brag…" He replied cockily.

"Just give us an idea of where the damn emerald is." Wave lightly slapped him to stop him trailing off.

"Okay, okay…" He closed his eyes and tried to think. He imagined what was round the corner. It all came so easily, for some reason… and then suddenly, he fazed out. He began to see things from afar, and like an x-ray, with translucent walls. He could see himself lying on the ground, unconscious, and Nack and Wave beside him trying to find out what happened. He could also see Jet speeding around the lower levels looking for something intently, but what he could see most clearly was a bright light down near the bottom of the complex, shining so brightly that it was hard to look at it. He could easily see the path leading to it, which looked fairly easy to follow. Half an hour, get the emerald, bish, bash, bosh, out of here. He tried to move… still he tried… then, with considerable effort…

He sat bolt upright, frightening Wave and causing Nack to fall over backwards.

"I've found it," He said clearly, before setting off down the hall and kicking his air-skates into gear. "Follow me," he called back. Wave immediately did so. He wasn't leaving as fast as Jet did, but he was still quick. Nack scrambled to his feet and hopped on the bike.

"Wait up! Don't lose me in this place!"

Bastards, was all Jet could think right now. Murderous bastards. All he could see was this blind rage, all he could hear was dying screams. Not ones he heard, but what he imagined. As he travelled further, he saw the odd blood stain on the wall. Within minutes the odd blood stain became bloody wallpaper, and here and there there was a mangled corpse. He slowed up a bit. At last, he stopped for he could go no further. It wasn't the fact that he was so horrified that he could barely stand up straight, nor the overwhelming stench, but the fact that he could not physically get through. He tossed his board aside and fell to his knees. A tear came to his eye. He knew that Babylon Garden had been ruined, but this was severely uncalled for. He took one last look at the giant pile of dead bodies before collapsing his head in his hands. He wept heavily, and did note make not of the passing of time.

For whatever could have been a few minutes or a few hours, he dried his eyes and steeled himself to continue. Though the sorrows of the world are many, he thought, there is not time enough to weep. Surely, this cannot be every hawk in the entire world… I can't be the last one. He wiped his eyes. Out of the corner of one, he noticed something. One of the bodies looked familiar. He recognised it as his father's. He had cried enough, so he didn't break down again. He came over to check it. The killings must have all been recent, because the bodies had not decomposed to any great degree. He tugged on a golden chain around the dead avian's neck. A small casket came away, with its door open. He picked it up and stared in disbelief and horror. No… it can't be… the only thing keeping the world, nay the universe safe… he threw it down and picked up his board again. He ran to gather speed and jumped on again. He had to warn the others… a great evil may have been unleashed before their very eyes. Who… who would do this to the world, he thought. Wait, what am I saying. Duh. Naugus. Probably did it on his way back from the base. Bastard, he just doesn't give us a break, does he?


	41. Chapter 41

Chapter 41

Chapter 41

She winced at the light. After a few seconds, she squinted to see that it was daylight. The sun was much further across the sky than she last remembered it; she must have been out for a few hours. She shook herself fully awake and looked around. She was still in the abandoned playground, lying on the dusty ground. Next to her, and looking rather concerned, were Rouge and Espio. They said nothing, only watched. Blade was nowhere to be seen.

"Wha… how long has it been?" She asked.

"You've been out for three hours." Rouge replied, sounding slightly timid still.

"Wh… how did it happen?"

"You don't remember?" Espio laughed in disbelief.

"Remember what?" Amy started to panic. She pulled her hand up to her mouth. There had been a funny taste in it waking up, and when she felt it, it was encrusted with something. She looked for something with a reflection. A puddle a few metres away did nicely. She held herself over it and gasped at the dried blood on her face.

"What the… what the fuck happened?" She asked, slightly panicked. Espio pointed to the corpse of the guard whom she had savaged earlier. She stared at length, inspecting the mess she had made of his neck, and also amazed at how clean the wound was… then it came back to her. The wound was clean because she had licked every last drop of blood from it. She stood in thought for a few moments, and then smiled maniacally. "Let's roll." She broke into a run, seeming to instinctively know where to go. Rouge tried to fly to keep up, but Amy was getting too fast. Espio decided to do what he did best: stay out of the light, cut corners and reach the destination before she did. Blade, who had been hiding in the tree, began to fly aswell. His wings, at least a foot more in wingspan and much more powerful, carried him a little faster than Amy was running, for a while. As he gained ground on her, he grabbed Rouge by the hand and gave her a tow. He looked back and smiled cheekily. Rouge simply glared comically, but then smiled and blushed a little.

Amy kept running for almost an hour without tiring, at least not greatly. Heh… maybe the effects haven't worn off after all… she thought. She skidded to a halt outside a building. She looked up at it intently. She stood there for a good fifteen minutes, waiting for everyone to show up. Espio was the last to arrive. It was beginning to get dark, the sun was low on the horizon and the sky was a dark crimson. Rouge put her ear to the ground, as if checking something.

"I hear something… it's not too far down, but it's definitely loud…"

"What is it?"

"I can't make out from this distance. We should check it out."

Amy walked forward and kicked down the doors. There was a broken elevator, and stairs going up and down. The ones going up were old and broken, and were of no use. The ones going down were obviously put in place after the fall of the city, the entrance was carved out of the floor crudely. They took the stairs down hastily. The way was lit by a few candles, and here and there the odd halogen lamp. As they descended through the cavernous walkways, the sound became louder. After a good twenty minutes of walking, the stairway opened out into a large room. At the opposite entrance stood two large lions, obviously bouncers. They were fitted with suits obviously three sizes too small for them and sunglasses through which they must have been completely unable to see in this poor light. They didn't move as Amy approached them fearlessly. She looked up at them sternly. They didn't even flinch, it was as if she wasn't there. Then she went to open the door. The one to her right grabbed her by the throat and threw her across the floor. She leapt to her feet, sword drawn, an irate look on her face.

"What the fuck? What was that for?!"

The one to her left spoke.

"You're not coming in. You're not on the list."

"What list?"

"Vector's list." The bouncers continued to stand there on duty. Amy simply smiled.

"Then I must be in the right place…" She ran forward and leapt in the air. She rammed the sword into the neck of the bouncer that spoke, and springboarded off him to slice the throat of the other one. The blood splattered on her already encrusted clothes.

"I believe I might a change of clothing." She opened the door slowly to find a large storeroom containing all sorts of weapons, coats and other items belonging to guests. A small hedgehog at the desk wasn't really paying attention when he said,

"May I take your coats, please…" Then he noticed Amy's blood-drenched attire. He screamed and ducked under the desk. Amy ran forth and leapt up on the desk. She rummaged in the coat rack until she found a long, black leather coat with a belt.

"This oughtta do nicely…" She wrapped it round her and did up the belt. She noticed a pair of dark sunglasses sitting in the coat pocket. She put them on just for kicks, and smiled as she continued. The others followed a little more warily. She opened the next door calmly and saw what the sound was. She was taken aback a little by what engulfed her – thundering drum'n'bass from speakers the size of helicopters. There was a massive throng of people in front of her, dancing wildly to the music. As she entered the club, the few lines of lyrics played over her not inconspicuous entrance.

_You're no good for me, I don't need nobody_

_Don't need no-one, that's no good for me…_

They played a few times as she made her way round the crowd. The others proceeded cautiously. Espio decided to blend into the shadows and keep a birds-eye view of things, crawling onto the ceiling. Rouge and Blade kept within arm's length of Amy, making sure to bail her out if she got into trouble. On the far side of the stone-walled enclosure, she could spy a familiar face; sitting in a sofa on the balcony above was the sly smirk of Vector. He hadn't changed an awful lot since their last encounter, other than that Vector was rather more alive this time. He stood up and leant over the balcony. Espio was poised on the ceiling ready to take him out should anything get out of hand. The song came to a close, and the DJ knew instinctively not to put on another one just yet. He knew what had happened to his predecessor…

"Well, well, well… it seems I have some rather esteemed guests…" He announced from his position. "If everyone would take a good long look at the pink hedgehog in the black leather coat and say hi!" Everyone in the club turned towards Amy, who stared back at them.

"Howdy, fellas…" She whipped out the katana and hammer that she had stashed inside the coat. Blade and Rouge had taken a few steps back to avoid attention. At the sight of the weapons, the smirk disappeared from Vector's face, and sat back down on the sofa. Everything was quiet. Unbeknownst to the DJ, he had left the sound system on. He panicked and ducked under the table, accidentally flipped the volume back up. Nobody moved. It served only to heighten the tension. All that was heard was the music for a few seconds. Everyone steeled themselves. Vector inspected the scenario, before issuing the command:

"Kill her." At this, the drums roared out and all hell broke loose. Amy turned and dashed up the wall, the coat trailing behind her and weapons in hand. She leapt backwards off it, into the crowd of people. Some, those who had come unarmed, had fled to the edges, not wanting to fight. But most pulled out a gun of some description and readied themselves for a fight. They weren't particularly well co-ordinated, and a few accidentally shot each other in the madness. Amy was much better prepared, and began to hack whoever came into her reach to pieces. The stray bullets whipped past her hitting nothing but air, and eventually the faces of those behind her, such was the energy of her combat. After a significant pile of bodies had mounted, she escaped the crowd using one as a springboard. She stuck the sword into her neck and lifted herself off the ground, bouncing on it before her victim had the chance to fall. With a mighty leap, she grabbed onto the edge of the balcony. She left Blade and Rouge to deal with a confused horde of people as she vaulted over the barrier. Espio joined her as he landed next to her. Vector was thoroughly bemused.

"How are you alive?" She asked, ready to slice him open again at a moment's notice.

"Thought you might ask. It was a little favour from a friend of mine, in return for doing odd jobs and a bit of safe-keeping…"

"Where's the emerald piece?" Espio cut straight to the chase.

"Well someone's a little impatient. Not willing to… stick around?" He hit a button and two massive cannons flipped down from the wall, and fired two large, green, globular shells. Both Amy and Espio dodged them nimbly, but in doing so, Vector had enough time to vault the sofa and run for it. He left his bodyguards to deal with his two uninvited guests. Amy simply smiled… _these bozos are no match…_


	42. Chapter 42

He felt the back of his head against cold steel. He had a bump somewhere on it, where he had hit the ground. He opened his eyes. It was a dark corridor; the lights were blown out.

"Silver, are you okay?" Blaze jumped on him and shook him a little. He jumped a little, startled.

"AH!"

"AH!"

Tails smiled and chuckled to himself. Then he looked back at the wrecked robots on the ground, their circuits and hydraulics scattered around like children's toys. He definitely made short work of these, he thought to himself.

"How did you do that?"

"What?" Then he saw the wreckage strewn across the floor. "Oh… uhm… sorry to disappoint, but… I don't know…" Tails raised an eyebrow.

"Right…"

"It'll become clear, eventually…" he turned and picked up his gun. "… I hope…" he whispered to himself as he walked away to investigate the corridor ahead. Blaze quickly hurried to catch up with him. Diesel and Cream waited for Silver before following.

"So… I keep hearing this name, Nazo… what does it mean?" Tails asked idly.

"You're being pretty oblivious for someone supposedly so mythology-savvy…"

"Okay, just come on. Spit it out."

"Okay. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right?"

"That has to be the most over-quoted law of physics in the history of the universe."

"…and every force has an equal and opposite force. Correct?"  
"Stands up in my book so far,"

"Well the energy of the Master Emerald has to be balanced out somehow. The positive energy spawned the angelic races…"

"Umm…"

"And the negative energy spawned Nazo."

"…why did the positive energy spawn hundreds when the negative only spawned one?"

"That is, one extremely powerful being, capable of bringing rack and ruin upon the world."

"Makes sense,"

"The races of angels, Nazo and the rest of the world will usually live in their own planes peacefully, until you get screwballs who decide to play with the Master Emerald."

"Like Naugus,"

"On the nose. Naugus has existed for thousands of years, prolonging his own existence by magical means. He was sealed away 5,000 years ago, just after he was released, by the tribe of Babylon, who have held the 'keys', so to speak, to his 'cell', and entrusted the Master Emerald to the Echidnas. And then…"

"…Eggman conquered Babylon garden ten years ago and released Naugus with the intention of aiding him in his world domination pursuits. That part I know."

"…right. And Naugus had his own plans to ravage the world by summoning Nazo…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa… wait up a sec. Didn't you tell me earlier that you didn't know what Nazo was?"

"Oh right. Yeah, I was screwing with you there." She grinned. Tails grumbled.

"Hey, what's that?" He stopped suddenly. The others quickly caught up.

"This is the hub of the industrial sector, the main smelting plant," Silver explained. "It's not far from the centre of the base…"

"…and Eggman…" Cream added determinedly.

"…oh, I'm closer than you think…" A voice called from behind the giant pot of bubbling, molten steel. The familiar oversized, orange moustache on a fat man seated in a hovering, eggcup-like craft sailed over the boiling metal and stationed itself at its lip.

"You!" Tails shouted.

"Looking for something?" The doctor span the piece of the emerald on his finger before grabbing it and stuffing it deep into a pocket. "I'm going to live up to that promise I made. Cold dead hands, you hear me?! Cold dead hands!" At that he turned his craft and fired two missiles at the structures supporting the smelting pot and sped away. The beams began to buckle and give way, causing the pot to fall towards the helpless bunch. Silver stuck his hands out in desperation, hoping something might happen…

…and happen something did. He was holding the pot and its contents a mere metre or two above the cowering group.

"RUN!" He yelled. Without coordination, the group split. Tails and Blaze ran one way, Diesel and Cream the other. Silver tried as best he could to hold the metal long enough for everyone to clear, before letting go and rushing for a route for himself. He leapt forward to the base of the pot, and scrambled to get around it. The ground tilted slowly down, and he could see streams of burning iron trickling towards him. He got up and started running as fast as he could away from it. Unfortunately, the ground got steeper, and the liquid metal faster. He read the sign on the tube he was about to descend. 'Shaft to Iron bin' . _Oh, well done, idiot…_ he thought to himself. The slowly descending ground became outright vertical shaft and he began to fall away from the smouldering metal. With enough will, he managed to conjure up the same disc of psychic energy that had saved him before. _This is useful…_ As he neared the bottom of the shaft – another pool of molten metal – he got ready to pull up and escape the shower of liquid industrial death following him. However, the pool was not much better. There was barely enough room for him to stand up in without melting his feet, and there were occasional flares coming up, leaving white hot marks on the scorched ceiling. He braved the pool to the other end, which had a very narrow opening with which overflow escaped. It was going to be a very tight squeeze. He knelt himself down on his board, trying to flatten down his flamboyant quills, which would inevitably catch on the ceiling. Worse still, a shower of metal began to pour over the opening, making it a suicide mission to pass through. But it was too late to turn back now, he had committed. He closed his eyes tightly, and concentrated, hoping for something to happen again, another mystical force produced from nowhere. As he heard the hissing of water droplets vapourising as they hit molten steel rise and slowly fade, and a wave of cool air wash over him, he opened his eyes slowly. He had made it through the falls of liquid metal and out into a vast chasm, with a small abandoned control centre in suspended in the middle. He made his way over to it and set himself down on the roof and entered via it. He took a moment to steady himself after what had just happened.

Tails picked his head up from the ground. He had taken a sharp blow to the nose from having fallen a bit too hard. He wasn't bleeding, but it still stung a bit. He quickly got up off the ground and inspected his surrounds. Blaze was beside him, unconscious. He smiled when he saw her breathing calmly. He looked behind him to see what had happened. The giant pot lay there, blocking the path back. He also saw a beam that had swung down, which appears to have been what knocked them out. The molten metal had solidified around it, making passage back all but impossible. He examined his surrounds a little more before climbing back to his feet. He nudged Blaze awake before insisting they carry on.

Diesel sat to one side puffing. He watched the molten metal darken and solidify, mere metres away from him. Cream had been lucky enough to get away aswell, by the fluff of her tail. He pulled her away from the hot metal frantically, only noticing how he was holding her minutes of close hugging later.


	43. Chapter 43

Chapter 43

"Well…"

"Come on! We want answers!" Manic nudged Nailei, impatient to know what was happening, preferably before Sonic returned with the car.

"…"

"You've known about this whole prophecy thing for a while now, haven't you?"  
"Yeah."

"Care to share some of that knowledge?"

"Well…"

"Not really?"  
"Kinda."

"Ugh…" Manic sank is head into his hands as the car descended from above.

"Shall we move along?" Sonic called cockily from the driver's seat of the car. The party boarded the car in the same way they were on it when they left. Without further ado, they proceeded into the tunnels.

"Yeeesh, what a dump!" Sonic commented on the hideous state that the tunnels were in. And rightly so; parts of the ceiling were crumbling in, letting soil into the cavern below, and some parts had caved in completely. In other places, the floor had fallen away to the chasm below of varying depth. One false move could send them plummeting downward. The original track was still intact in some places, but was for the most part bent and broken, with some sections missing entirely. Most of the lights were now smashed pieces of glass, but enough of them remained to illuminate the way. As they sped along the tunnels, a couple of rocks would occasionally tumble from the ceiling, occasionally bouncing of the bonnet of the speeding vehicle. Tikal found this experience rather frightening, and decided to hide under the arm of a watchful Knuckles. Nailei was more indifferent about the collapsing tunnels, whereas Jakavi was more concerned with trying to hold on to the moving car. Sonic kept his eyes on the path ahead, concentrating on not crashing. Manic was playing with the radio trying to find a decent station. Giving up on that, he tried to catch a nap, which proved impossible under the current circumstances. Failing that, he decided upon making snide comments on the condition of the tunnels.

"Talk about deadbeat owners,"

"Ever considered the possibility that said owners could be long dead?"

"Well their crumbling legacy is still here," Manic then noticed Knuckles staring off into space. "What's got you off in your own little world?"

"These tunnels nearly destroyed Angel Island," He replied bluntly.

"WHAA?!" Manic gawped in disbelief.

"The easy access brought floods of tourists from the city. And you know the type – trampling on everything, picking every damn flower they see, taking a little piece of the ruins to bring home with them…agh… just aswell Eggman attacked when he did, any later and there would be nothing left on the island…"

"Yikes… guess it has that kinda effect."

"Ech. It was doomed one way or another. The Master Emerald was stolen and the island fell into the sea. The ruins are probably all but gone now…" Tikal clung onto Knuckles. He put a comforting arm around her. "It'll be okay…"

The crumbling tunnels soon gave way to open tropical woodland, the short stretch of road leading to the coast. The sun shone brightly upon the sandy track, and the sea glittered in the distance. Jakavi relaxed a little as Sonic slowed down.

"Nice day," Manic smiled as he flipped out a pair of sunglasses. Sonic brought the vehicle to a stop on the beach.

"We'd better refuel here, it would be a bit more awkward out on the water,"

"Good plan. Now I need to pee." Manic leapt out the side of the car and walked off behind a few trees.

He unzipped his flys and breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the gentle trickling. Above that, though, he could hear something else. Something like a thumping and screaming sound… he zipped his flys back up and tried to determine the direction. It seemed to be coming from underground… somehow. He tracked the sound until he could hear it at its loudest, and then dug. The dry sand ran like liquid, which made digging rather difficult. He enlisted the help of a nearby flat stone to scoop more than could flow back in. After a frantic ten minutes of digging, he uncovered a flat, grey panel of plastic. He located its edges; it was sealed down. He took the stone and began banging the edge of it sharply on the panel. After four attempts it broke a clean hole. The sound rang clearly now:

"HELP!" A female voice called.

"Hello?" He called down. "Who's there?"

"Doesn't matter, just get me outta here!" She called back irately.

"I'll be back in a second," He dashed back to the car to get some help. Knuckles and Tikal appeared to be busy with each other, and Nailei and Jakavi were off to one side maintaining their handmade weaponry. Sonic, however, was sitting idly at the car. "Hey, Sonic, I've found someone stuck down a hole!"

"Someone you say?"

"Yeah. Come look!" He ran back to where he found the unknown person. Sonic followed wearily. "Okay, I've brought help!" He called down the dark hole.

"Yeah, that's great, can you get me out now?"

"Um… okay… how do you plan on us doing that?"

"Manic, you're an idiot…" Sonic went back to the car, took a length of rope from the boot and returned. He smashed the rest of the panel in, tied the rope around a nearby tree and lowered the other end of rope down the hole. He stood back to let the trapped person climb free. As she straightened herself up and shook herself off, all three gasped in shock.

"Sonic… Manic…"

"…Sally," Sonic managed to utter.

"We… thought you'd disappeared," Manic gawped.

"Well I did, kinda, I mean you're not going to see me down a hole out here, are you?"

"…how are you alive!?"

"Well… long story really."

"Can you shorten it a bit? We kinda need to get going…"

"What's the rush?"

"Well…" Sonic thought for a second. "I'll probably take too long explaining so I'll let Manic blurt it out in an incomprehensible string of words."

"SonicandalltheguyscamealongandfoundmeinNaugusestowerandthenwewentupstairstofindnaugusandkillhimbuthewasntthereandwehadtolegitbacktothebaseandtherewerethesepeoplefromthefutureandthenTailsdidsomefunkyangelshitandhefixedthemasteremeraldbutthenhebrokeitagainandsentitofftothefarendsoftheworldsowehadtogotoAngelIslandandwefoundtheseKitsunealongthewayandwebroughttwoofthemwithusandnowe'rehereandcanwekeeptheKitsunesSoniccanwecanwecanwe?!"

"I… think… I got some of that…" She said as she tilted her head.

"I don't even know what I said there!" Manic grinned.

"Anyway," Sonic said. "How did you get there?"

"Well… you remember when I disappeared? It was right after that big meeting of Freedom Fighter bigwigs,"

"Oh yeah… had to sit through the whole thing…"

"I was on my way home afterwards, when me and my bodyguards were ambushed. They were good guards, but taking the bullet for me didn't really help much. So here I am, late at night in deserted streets with a bunch of robots – Eggman's robots, not the crappy Naugus ones – with nothing to defend myself with. I ran, but they backed me into a corner, and then I was screwed. They captured me with some… bubble… robot… thing… and carried me off to… here… which is, where by the way?"

"At the exit of the tunnels between the base and Angel Island,"

"Nobody come this way anymore?"

"I think we're the first to pass this tunnel for a good three years now,"

"So… wait a sec… how long was I down in there?"

"Umm… you disappeared about three and a half years ago…" Manic said, casually. Sally took a few steps back in disbelief.

"Three… years…"

"What's wrong? Missing three years worth of birthday presents?" Manic quipped.

"I'm just… a bit… shocked…"

"So how did you survive down there?" Sonic asked. Sally took a moment to steady herself before answering.

"Well… it was automated, mostly. Machine gave me food and water, room had a bed, toilet, shower, sink, you know, the basics. But then the food and water stopped a few days ago, so I'm kinda hungry. Had to drink shower water… ech. Horrible stuff."

"Heh. That reminds me… didn't Tails say we needed a few weeks to find the pieces of the emerald?"

"Oh yeah. That was earlier today and we're nearly there."

"Woo, grand quest."


	44. Chapter 44

A/N: Okay, I'm officially out of chapters. From here on you will be getting them as they come, hot off the presses. Well. Not exactly, but you get the idea. Shows how slowly I write ; anyway. Have a nice chapter!

--

With burning hatred in his heart, he flew for his life. Every muscle, every sinew, every cell in his body concentrated on avenging his people._ These ruins were the last residence of all the avians…_ _I must be one of the last alive,_ he thought. _Just me, Wave… maybe two or three freedom fighters…_ As he continued on this melancholic train of thought, another thought suddenly hit him like a ton of rough granite bricks. _Those bodies were relatively fresh… no more than a day old… that means… the killer could still be… oh fuck._ He redoubled his pace. _Gotta warn the others…_

Shadow had given up on the rocket-skates function of his boots and had taken to running. Rounding corners at hectic speed, he would occasionally run along the wall for a good ten metres before kicking off it to round another corner. Nack and Wave struggled to keep up, forced to abandon their vehicles because of the twisting, convoluted tunnels. They stopped to catch their breath as Shadow began scaling an impossible wall of rubble, with the aid of his chain.

"Oh fuck off…" Nack managed between pants as he watched the black hedgehog assail the obstacle. Shadow leapt on to the top and paused. He looked over his shoulder at the other two and called back;

"What are you waiting for?" He promptly jumped down.

"Ugh… surely it can't be much further…" Wave panted. She looked round as she heard the noise of an airboard behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see Jet round the corner behind them at speed. He grabbed Jet and Nack by the scruffs of their necks and hauled them on to the back of his board as he proceeded to kick off the various rocks and stones to climb the wall of rubble in front of them. Once he was able to kick over the top, he released the two of them at the top of the wall and kicked his board away. He landed roughly on his feet. Nack and Wave cautiously descended the wall as Jet waited.

"Come on, we're nearly there!"

"Have you known all along without telling us!?" Nack replied irately.

"No, I can see it!" Jet pointed through the open double doors, which Shadow had already proceeded through.

Shadow treaded cautiously into the cavernous dome. His chain rattled on the metal floor of the room, very different from the catacomb-esque tunnels they had just emerged from. He stepped up to the edge, where he could see to the rounded floor. The room took the shape of a giant sphere, with a few signs in Arabic here and there, usually with an airboard next to it. There were even a few airboards scattered around the place. Seemingly floating in the centre of the room, most likely under its own power, was the piece of the emerald. It glowed faintly, and was pulsing slightly. However, between the emerald and him was a greyish blur – with wind moving off it. It was also making a fair amount of noise.

"Shadow, Shadow… hey, what the…" Jet bounded in.

"…I don't remember this being here…" Wave followed closely.

"What is this?" Shadow asked after a brief pause.

"This used to be the testing room and sometimes arena for Extreme Gear. It was built down here after they developed ones that could ride on walls and ceilings. But… whatever that is was never there before…"

"Well inside 'whatever that is' is the piece of the emerald,"

"Shit, you're right." Nack sauntered in, casually.

"Hmm…" Shadow thought hard for a minute. "Fetch me a pebble from outside."

"Fetch a pebble from outside," Nack mocked as he returned to the pile of rubble to find a small stone. He lobbed it at Shadow who wheeled round and caught it, without so much as looking at it. His chain traced a circle around him. He took a step back and motioned for the others to do the same. He hurled the pebble forwards, and it immediately chinked off the blur with a few sparks and landed on the ground next to his feet. He examined the stone – chipped. Blunt impact. "I have an idea…" He said to anyone who would listen, not caring who. He closed his eyes and concentrated, attempting to block out all the surrounding noise. He tensed up, then relaxed his muscles, letting energy flow into his core. After what felt like an hour but could only have been a few minutes, he opened his eyes. The world appeared different now. Everything was blurred slightly, but moved a lot slower. The blur in front of him was in fact three rings, sharpened at the edges, spinning around the floating pedestal of the emerald. They were spinning at a more reasonable speed now, and he could easily step through it if he wanted to. He looked round at the others. They were moving at a negligible speed – he could wave his hand in front of their faces and their eyes wouldn't even move.

He took a step up to the edge of the platform. The spinning rings were still moving at a fair pace, but slow enough for him to navigate safely. He took a run at the edge and dived head first through the first sizeable gap he saw. His chain clipped against the closing metal rings, but cleared it before the gap closed. He grabbed on to the central platform as soon as it was within reach, and his chain swung over to the other side, making it easier for him to pull himself up. He clawed up on to the platform, and slowly climbing to his feet. He could feel the throbbing, pulsating energy from the shard, glowing stronger now. He paced around it, observing it, determining what to do with it. He put his hand over it, and could feel a radiant energy off it, not heat, not light, but some kind of other energy. He touched it briefly. It felt no different than any other piece of glass, or smooth surface. He scooped it up in his hand and tossed it around a little. He held it in his right hand, with the chain extending from his wrist. The chain glowed a little, and small seams of yellow light emanated from it. He closed his eyes again and concentrated on the emerald, trying to extract the awesome power contained within.

Then suddenly, for a brief moment, he felt the world black out, and all he saw was this light, this energy, the heat he felt crawling along his arm. All he could do was stand idly by as it filled his body, warming him, filling him with power. It began to swell in him, making him feel pressure inside him, making him feel nearly ready to burst…

… But he didn't. Instead he snapped back to consciousness, with new vigour. The first thing he noticed was that the world in front of him was now completely still. The next thing he noticed was that he was several feet in the air.


	45. Chapter 45

A/N: Okay. This is gonna be the last chappie for a while, I'm going away for five weeks. I'll be online now and then, but I won't be doing any writing. Oh well, I'm still going after 45 chapters! Yaay!

* * *

A quick disposal job was all that was required of them to despatch the few guards left to deal with them. Before the last one even hit the floor, the pair of them ran after their target.

"Fast little bastard, isn't he?" Amy yelled, slightly unnecessarily, but definitely being heard clearly.

"Crocodiles can run pretty fast…" Espio called back, struggling to keep up with her. The tunnel entered a cavern with a massive fortified wall; armed to the teeth with impressive looking artillery, but not a soul in sight.

"In a straight line…" She grinned as she saw Vector in a mild panic at the base of the wall, with nowhere to run.

"AH!" He called out, surprised. "You… you… looking for something?" He held up the piece of the emerald, trying to think of a way to escape.

"Hand it over before we make crocodile stew out of you!" Amy threatened, pointing an outstretched (and somewhat bloodstained) katana at him.

"Try me!" He shouted back defiantly. He turned and hurled the emerald as high as he could, before running another way, in an attempt to split them.

"I'll take the emerald, you go after Vector!" Amy barked at Espio.

"No! That's what he wants us to do!"

"Then what do you suggest we do!?"

"Both go after the emerald!" He dashed towards the wall and started to climb. Amy followed quickly. The emerald had landed neatly on the top of the wall. Espio was the superior climber, but he kept at Amy's pace. At the top, she snapped out and grabbed the emerald quickly, not wasting any time on drama.

"Let's go! We've got the emerald!" Amy was eager to leave before anything else happened.

"No… wait. Something's not right." Espio stood and looked around for a few seconds. The cavern was silent. Almost silent… a faint rumbling slowly rose in volume until it became very apparent that Vector was not about to let the emerald slip away so easily. All they could do was watch as a large vehicle, somewhere between a drilling machine and a tank, burst through the cave wall and blocked their only route of escape, barring the small hole in the ceiling a hundred feet in the air that provided the only light source in the dank, musty cave.

"Well, well… two trapped rats and a gemstone…" He grinned as he popped up from the hatch on the top, his extraneous sunglasses hanging from his fingers. Suddenly, his mood turned from playful to serious. "Hand it over!"

"Never!" Amy cried out defiantly, discarding caution for passion.

"Looks like we're doing this the hard way…" Vector popped back down into the tank and started moving the turrets around. Amy's and Espio's eyes simultaneously widened when they saw the shell barrelling towards them. With a quick acrobatic manoeuvre, the shell slammed into the wall behind them, harmlessly chucking dust into the air.

"Hmm… distract him!" Amy yelled out to Espio. He nodded, knowing what she would probably try now. He leapt up in the air and started darting from surface to surface, drawing his fire. Amy all but disappeared, hiding behind the rubble and fortifications. "Okay baby," She whispered to herself, examining the emerald. "Let's see what you can do…" She clasped the emerald shard close to her chest, embracing its power. It appeared to do nothing for a few seconds, but then the warm energy hit her like a hard punch to the stomach. The rubble she was hiding behind backed away through some invisible force, and she felt herself rise up in the air. She let go of herself, embracing the rush. It felt almost sexual… but better. The feeling intensified, and she wanted to moan out loud… but she couldn't. It escalated until it was almost at a peak, but then everything snapped back into place and she hit reality with a smack. Here she was, back in the gritty underground fort. Her stolen black leather jacket had disappeared, replaced by some red, leathery, almost scaly garment, sleeveless and going down to her ankles. Her runners had been replaced with tough boots of the same material, and she had cuffs of the same again. She ran her tongue around her mouth. She felt those pronounced canines she had had earlier, only longer now. Her two most trusted weapons were still present; katana in right hand, hammer in left. She held the former up to check something – she observed her reflection in the shiny metal. Two, great, scaly wings, several feet in span protruded from her back. She gave them a little flap and smiled, noting their strength.

Leaving the emerald hidden, she burst forth from her hiding place, making Vector jump in his seat. She leapt forth into the air and flapped the massive wings to keep herself airborne. Inside the tank, the tracksuited crocodile began to panic. _Shit… he warned me about this. I'm fish food now…_ Sure enough, Amy landed with a thud on the roof of the metallic behemoth. She smacked the lid a few times with her hammer, knocking it away like a piece of litter. Vector looked up at her, with her devilish grin, massive fangs showing clearly, and a glint on her weapons that made them look all the deadlier.

"Fu…" Was all he could manage before eighteen inches of smooth, curved steel slid through his skull, causing it to buckle and spill its contents violently. She flinched as a few flecks of blood splattered on to her face. She licked her lips and pulled a face.

"Ech… reptiles. Not tasty," She spat teasingly. She dropped into the cockpit and examined the corpse, still twitching slightly. "Better make sure you don't come back again…" She said dutifully to herself, before taking the sword in both hands and slicing the body into the finest pieces possible.

Espio watched the whole affair from a distance curiously, keeping his distance after seeing a few drops of blood spray from the opening. After a few tense minutes, her head popped up through the opening, splattered liberally with blood.

"You don't wanna go down there." She advised wisely. Espio nodded.

Meanwhile back at the club, Rouge was walking all over everyone. Blade kept the unarmed witnesses in check, scaring them occasionally with a dirty glance. Rouge would find somebody who wasn't quite dead yet, put a firm boot to their neck, look them in the eye and say something sarcastic and teasing to them before giving them a shove, or a kick for the 'cheeky' ones. When nobody stirred for a full five minutes she began to grow bored.

"I'm gonna see what the gruesome twosome have been up to. Kay?" She said, not expecting any kind of response. She looked over her shoulder briefly, a cursory glance into the room, and she caught Blade staring at her leather-clad behind. She smiled a little. "You like what you see?" She gave him a little wiggle to tease him. He licked his lips, maintaining his gaze. She carried on walking in a slightly more teasing manner than before. She wandered off in a clearly different direction to that which Amy and Espio had gone. Blade followed with gusto.


	46. Chapter 46

A/N Like, whoa! Long time since I submitted anything! Don't worry I didn't forget about you all, I just went away for a while. And now I'm back, and trying to finish this before Christmas, because I've been at this for over a year now! Well one chapter a time, say, one every week until Christmas makes room for about 16 chapters. Should be enough to finish it :D Well anyway, here's your chapter.

* * *

"I don't think we'll be going back that way anytime soon…" Blaze prodded the hardened metal with a gloved finger. It was still hot to the touch, but not burningly so, and it was cooling quickly in the cold, polar environment.

"We should head this way, maybe we'll meet up with the others later on."

"Not like we have any other option open to us…"

The pair wandered through the rusting, metallic corridors: it was amazing that this place was still in use. But in use it was, until what must have been a few days ago: there were abandoned tools and assorted things lying around the place dropped in use. A couple of machines were still whirring, and furnaces left on. Apart from the 'welcoming committee' there were no robots in sight, who would normally be operating them. They walked in silence, nothing in particular to talk about. In fact there was a certain awkward atmosphere, the two of them, wandering through the place on their own, nobody else around to know what was going on…

"Wait, stop," Blaze froze. She heard something. She grabbed Tails' arm to stop him proceeding further. She adjusted her ears, trying to discern the location of the source. It sounded high-pitched and distressed, like, whimpering, almost crying, even. She turned to one side, to see a few shabby lockers, doors dented and rusting. One of the doors was open slightly, and had a couple of dusty fingerprints on it. The noise appeared to be coming from here. She carefully prised it open, sniffing it slightly to determine what was inside. When the light fell on its sole inhabitant, both her and Tails gasped. There, cowering in the corner was a small child, a cat, clinging on to a slightly ripped teddy bear, holding her knees close to her chest in fear, ears flattened down. She looked about six years old, in slightly ragged clothes. She quivered slightly, terrified of her surroundings and unsure what was going to happen to her. Blaze and Tails were speechless. They hadn't a clue what to do with her, and less so to what she was doing here.

"Uh… hello?" Tails asked, gingerly. The little girl winced, expecting some kind of blow to strike her. When she looked back up and the two were still standing just outside, she loosened up a little.

"Y… y… you're not g-gonna eat m-me?" She squeaked. Blaze giggled slightly.

"Of course not. C'mere," she gestured. The child tentatively stepped out of ladder, clinging on to the teddy for dear life. She was still trembling. Blaze knelt down to get to her level. "What's your name?"

"Umm… I don't know…" She replied, twiddling her oddly familiar purple hair. Blaze looked puzzled.

"Come on, you must have a name," The child just milled around without giving a straight answer. Blaze gave up on the name front.

"How did you get here?"

"I've always been here," She replied. Tails pulled a surprised face, which made the youngster giggle. "Do it again!" She laughed. Tails did so, noting the positive reaction it got from her. Blaze took the opportunity to rummage around the place, trying to find some hint to the reason for the little girl's presence. The first door was an office, clearly abandoned in a hurry, files all over the place. One folder was tossed across the desk, its contents strewn around, but still in a neat pile. She opened it and looked at the first page. On it was a profile photo of the little girl. _Heh… first time lucky._ She read the profile, picking lines at random and reading off their information in her head. Age, blood type, medical conditions… then something hit her. She glanced over the last couple of details. _Blood type… AB+… that's the same as mine! Medical conditions… mild allergy to certain types of pollen… same again… _She looked up to the top, the only line she hadn't read yet. _Name: …_ she stopped dead. The three words before her played endlessly in her head, repeating ad infinitum for a few brief moments. _Vesta "Blaze" Abascal… that's…_

She staggered around the room, trying to get her head around this revelation. It all added up… all the details on the file matched her own… the fur colour was identical… even that same distinctive shade in her eyes… she eventually sat on the floor with a thump. Tails heard this and came inside to investigate. The young Blaze followed him in.

"Blaze, what happened?"

"T… take a look at this…" she weakly passed him the file. He browsed through it quickly, and upon realising its significance, emitted an expletive at considerable volume. The young Blaze looked up puzzled.

"What does it mean Mr. Tails sir?"

"Umm… let's see… how to explain this to a child… do you know what a paradox is?" He asked her. She shook her head. The older Blaze sank her head into her hands.

"Tails, don't bother…" she clambered to her feet. "Let's roll." She said bluntly, her calm restored.

"Diesel! Stop it!"

"Look, it's not like I'm meaning to look down your…"

"What was that…"

"I don't know… but it didn't sound good…"

"I think maybe we should turn back…"

"You might be r…"

_CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK_

"RUN!"

The pallid hedgehog hurriedly clambered to his feet, having just spent the last couple of minutes gasping for air after the events he had just been through. He was going to waste no more time. _Eggman… where did he go?_ The control room was as lifeless as the frozen wastes outside the base, and there were no signs of any kind of functionality to the multitudes of superfluous buttons. He prodded a few to see what they did, only verifying this fact. With nothing in the room of any use, he looked for a way out. There was a single doorway over on one side, leading out on to a walkway to the other side from the one he came from, which looked flimsy at best. He glanced back at the room to check for anything of value. Seeing nothing, he pushed at the door. This was in vain, because it was a sliding door, and just like everything else in the suspended room, it wasn't going to work anytime soon. He kicked it in frustration. Nothing happened. He ran towards it and charged it, but again, the door refused to let him pass. As he fell to the ground a second time, he saw the way he came in: _Of course!_ With that, he climbed through the hole in the roof (with the aid of a nearby crate) and went round the door. The catwalk was as fragile as it appeared to be from the outside, and he clung to the railings all the way across. He hurried the last few yards to the mercifully open door. He looked over his shoulder at the far-from-sturdy bridge, before pressing on.


	47. Chapter 47

With another occupant in the car, they sped across the flat seas towards the site of Angel Island. Some sea-life encrusted trees and mountains grew in the distance, the remnants of the once lush floating island. The half submerged island approached, and Knuckles stared down at his shoes, still reluctant to believe what had happened. Tikal choked back a tear to see her home in such a state. Sonic just kept on driving.

He stopped the car next to what was once the peak of the mountain, just close enough to hop off. The once steep gradient was now so level that the car could be set down on it, in a centimetre or two of water. Sonic immediately hopped off and started to look around. Manic followed quickly, and Nailei after him. Knuckles steeled himself a bit, before hopping over the side.

"Coming?" He said to Tikal. She sat there in the car, shaking. "I guess not…"

"But Knux, we need a guide!" Sonic called back, surveying their potential route.

"You've been here before, you work it out!"

"But…"

"Go!"

"Looks like the blue man's our guide here," Sally winked, nudging Sonic slightly.

"Just shut up and let's go…" He set off through the angled forest, his party in close tow.

"Yeesh, Neptune really took a bat to this place…" Manic jeered. His attempted wit fell on deaf ears, as everyone was focussed on the mission. Neither Nailei nor Jakavi had ever been outside the forest before, and treaded cautiously.

"The emerald shard is probably at its altar, near the highest point in the island. Shouldn't be too far from here…" Sonic explained, not really talking to anyone in particular. The path led down in to a tunnel, which still held clusters of corals and other sea life in it. He skidded down the gradient towards, growing steeper by the metre, and kicked off it near the mouth of the cavern. _Let's see if I can do this again…_ he thought to himself as he span himself in the air to land his feet on the roof. Closing his eyes to concentrate, he felt the impact on the soles of his shoes, and put one foot forward to start running again. With a gasp, it made contact, and so did the other when it went forward. Before long, he was confidently running on the ceiling. With one last flip, he curled up in a ball to land himself on the ground again. He opened his eyes again, taking in his new surroundings. "I found it!" he yelled out in joy. "It's just over there… across… that impassable cavern…" He continued, the elation fading from his voice with every syllable. Manic slid down (in a markedly less spectacular fashion) and stood beside him.

"Well that's what's behind door number one, would you like to stick or change?" He quipped. Sonic thumped him.

Back up at the mouth of the cave, Jakavi had begun his slow, clambering descent, while Nailei leapt from wall to wall in a more energetic approach. Sally simply stood and sulked.

"Well is nobody going to help a princess down?"

"Let me think about that one… NO!" Nailei jeered. "Make your own way down!"

"Goddamit… punk-ass foxes… or whatever the hell they are…" She muttered. Nailei only just caught that snippet, and looked up with a glare. She grabbed a good foothold with her legs and arched back, taking her bow in one hand and an arrow in another. With careful aim, she fired one in the direction of Sally, so that it whistled dangerously close to her head. This stunned her, and she turned and fell over. She began to tumble, head-over-heels down the cavern, towards Sonic and Manic. She rolled to a stop a metre or two behind them.

"We could… what was that?" The pair of them wheeled round.

"Augh… would you boys give me some kind of better treatment than this?" She groaned, brushing herself off. She had a couple of cuts and bruises, but nothing too serious.

"Still accustomed to the cream of the cake?"

"Manic, shut your cakehole. You were never funny."

"Aww come on, there's no need to be that harsh…"

"And you. Sonic." She pulled him closer by the coat. "Did you ever think that being nice to me all the time was ever gonna keep me interested?"

"But…"

"I have… well. Had, a legion of servants to be nice to me. I needed someone bad. Someone with balls. Someone that neither of you could ever be," Sonic displayed a confused expression. "Don't look at me like that!" She grinned. She turned and walked away, calling over her shoulder. "This is one cake neither of you are getting your teeth into," She chuckled and continued out of the cave. When she was out of earshot, Manic made a whipping gesture with his hand, with the accompanying sound. Sonic simply said,

"Did anyone tell her I wasn't interested in her anymore?"

The two of them put the strange episode behind them and returned to the problem at hand.

"I could probably jump it."

"You WHAT?"

"Remember when I made that jump to the helicopter?"

"That wasn't nearly as far as this!"

"I can still do it. Just watch me!" Sonic smirked, starting to remember some of the joy he found in adventuring. He took a few steps back, and took a running jump over the edge. He accelerated upwards a few feet higher than would normally be possible, and carried forward with unnatural speed. He began to drop a little earlier than he expected, and the ledge which he needed to grab slipped further and further away from him. Knowing that this might happen, he put a foot forward to catch on the cliff-face, and put all his effort into running on the wall again.

"Goddamit, quit showing off!" Manic shouted from the far ledge. Sonic simply laughed and carried on forward, flipping in the air and landing on his feet on the ground.

"Damn, that felt good!" He stood and panted. He hadn't had a rush like that in years. Eager to regain that sense of freedom he got from acrobatically defying gravity at ridiculous speeds, he took off again, bouncing from tree to tree and sailing through the air, becoming once again the blue blur that he had earned his reputation with.


	48. Chapter 48

A/N: Hey look! Two chapters in the same month! Same week, even! Good lord! Hah. I have a brief confession to make here. When I left this part of the story last, it was actually an unfinished chapter, but I decided to roll with it and not bother anyone much with it. Just to clear the air a bit there. Now, on with it!

* * *

"Having fun?" A familiar voice called. Familiar, but still quite bone-chilling. Shadow looked up in surprise. It didn't sound like Jet, Wave or Nack, and to the best of his knowledge they were the only ones there. The rings were still rotating slowly, so he knew he was still experiencing time at a slower pace.

"What?" He looked around him, confused. It nearly took his mind off his current altitude, but he was quickly alerted of that again. He looked downward at the ground again, and saw the same spiked chain he had been stuck with already, but longer, and with a few more spiked implements protruding from the end of it. It glowed with a little more intensity now aswell. He gave it a testing flick. It felt powerful. He arched his back and felt something different, something affecting his position more than anything else. He looked toward one of the reflective rings, moving slow enough for him to see his reflection at more than a glance, and saw something behind him. Something large and black. The next ring came around. He got a closer look; a couple of feathers were fluttering off. One drifted into his hand, and he looked at it intensely. A few seconds passed, and he crushed the feather in his hand and smirked.

"So… the ultimate life form has reached his ultimate form…"

"What do you mean?" Shadow wheeled round in place, his new wings being instinctive already. Behind, him floating in the air, at roughly his altitude. The long flowing hood masked his face.

"It's not often that you come across someone with the integrity to withstand so much chaos flowing through their body."

"You!" Shadow recognised the voice now. "I'm never handing the emerald over!"

"Oh, I could make it well worth your while…"

"Bargaining? That's a new low…" Shadow scowled.

"Low? You're one to talk about low. If I remember rightly you used to be no stranger to a deal or two."

"Shut up! I'm not that guy anymore!"

"I'm sure you'll come around…"

"SHUT UP!" He yelled, and swung the chain towards the hooded figure. The figure dodged backwards, but then slowed down to a near stop. Over the course of the next few seconds, an orb began to appear over the figure. Shadow drifted in closer to get a closer look. He tapped it with his finger out of curiosity. It was solid. He waited. The orb remained, and the figure did not move. _Hmm…_ he thought. _Guess he can only use a limited amount of powers at the same time…_ then he looked round and saw the others, still standing there, awed at what was going on. He decided to make the best of the opportunity and flee. He kicked off the rigid sphere and skilfully through the twirling rings, not so much as brushing them. He flapped his wings a few more times to gain some more altitude, and swooped down to pick his three companions up in one go. He proceeded to fly along the halls, returning to the outside, having retrieved what they came for. With a quick glance behind him, he saw that Naugus was still inside his shielding orb. He grinned and redoubled his pace.

Kicking off a couple more walls and out into the courtyard again, he dropped down to the ground and released the three he was carrying. He made sure they wouldn't fall over before letting them stand. He took a few steps back and set the emerald down on the ground. Nothing happened. He kicked it a few yards away. Still, nothing changed.

"Goddamit, how do I get back from this?!" He shouted in frustration, trying to return his perception of time to normal. He thumped the ground, leaving two small craters where his fists were. He walked back over and picked the emerald up again. "Hmm… so it's a battle of wits, is it?" He gazed into the emerald, as if trying to see it peeking back out at him. All he saw was the reflection of an irate, black-furred hedgehog with equally dark coloured feathery wings. He cast the emerald straight up into the air, yelling again in torment. Upon reaching its apex, much higher than he would normally be able to throw it, it remained at that height, seeming to fall rather slowly. He watched it, trying to think of reasons why it could be doing this. He thought back to some of the physics Tails had idly spat out, trying to remember some. He played it back in his head and spoke it aloud. "So the gravity at that height is much lower, about seven metres per second squared…" then he stopped. That was it. "Metres per second… I'm experiencing time at a slower rate… and if gravity is measured against time… then I experience lower gravity!" He revelled briefly in his slight triumph of logic. When he had finished, he stopped dead again. Nothing had changed. The emerald was still tumbling gingerly from the sky, not showing any signs of reaching the ground anytime soon. "Come ON! Stop! Halt! Cease! Whoa horsie!" Still nothing. "Oh for the love of… I should be able to stop like…" he said, and he clicked his fingers. Upon the click, he arched his back involuntarily and all unnatural appendages began to retreat inside his body. Time slowly sped up to a normal pace, and the emerald fell at a normal speed again, landing with a thunk on Jet's head and landing squarely in Nack's confused hand.

"What in the…"

"Well… that was… simple…" Shadow gasped, a little shaken.

"What just happened? Why are we in the courtyard? And… how did we get the emerald?"

"Umm… it's kinda complicated…" He explained, just a little bit confused and embarrassed. "Wait a second… my arm!" He looked at his right arm, and ran his other hand up and down it in amazement… "It's… healed…"

"Whoopdee-frickin-doo…" Jet mocked, rolling his eyes. "Nobody listen to me, that's right…"

"Why, what happened to you?" Wave replied. Shadow was too engrossed in his own miraculous recovery, and Nack was juggling the shard of the emerald between his hands idly.

"I was down in the back corridors… I found them…"

"Found what?"

"Not what, who… the people of the city…"

"What… what do you mean?"

"I mean that the bottom of this big rock has corpses coming out of its asshole!" He cried out, almost in tears again. Nack nearly dropped the emerald. Jet took a moment to steady himself.

"Holy…"

"They were pretty fresh too… whatever killed them isn't far away. And I have a hunch who it was…"

"I don't suppose his name would begin with an 'N', would it?" Wave asked, knowing full well the answer.

"Uh oh…"

"Shadow…" Nack turned and looked at him worriedly. "What did you do…"

"I didn't do anything… but I have a funny feeling we should start running about…" Before he could finish his sentence, he heard what sounded like an explosion, coming from deep below the ground. The ground began to tremble and a couple of walls began to crumble. Rubble shook and rolled around. "…now?"


	49. Chapter 49

Close together in a cramped space, two bodies clad in leather and denim rub together sensually, ground up against a wall, slowly removing items of clothing, piece-by-piece, until fur rubs against sweat-dripped fur, as hot with passion as with the heat from the two bodies in the tiny cupboard. He runs his fingers down her back, so smooth, so perfect. She moans softly, almost inaudibly, and briefly utters a name…

"Oh… Bla…" She stopped. Some cluttering came from outside. Both of them swivelled round. He peered through the door, ajar, to see what was going on.

"Goddamit, where the hell did they go? BLADE! ROUGE!" A female voice called out. A scarlet blur rushed past the door. He looked back inside.

"I think we better resume this later," Rouge said, zipping her clothes back on. Blade simply nodded, pulling his trousers up.

"Looking for someone?" Rouge called after Amy, while checking that all her weapons and tools were still in place. Amy looked round, a menacing look on her face, splattered with blood. Rouge stopped and observed her new form. Her scaly wings took up most of the narrow hallway, dwarfing Rouge's, and looking infinitely more powerful, and her blood-stained face peered from behind them, shaded from the light. Rouge stepped back a little and gulped. Amy carried on forward. Espio rushed past her.

"Come on. We need to get out of here."

"Why so hurried?"

"Just come on! We've got no time to lose!"

"What's going on?" Blade asked, stepping out into the hallway.

"I don't know, but apparently we gotta go, hun."

Amy was storming away at a frightening pace. The others were severely struggling to keep pace. Rouge eventually caught up and began pestering.

"What happened back there?"

"I got this," Amy held up the glowing emerald shard. "Took care of Vector, made sure he wasn't coming back. Got a comm from Shadow, he's in trouble. He's got his shard but he's got Naugus too."

"So what's our plan?"

"Regroup with him and help him get the hell out of there."

"How long do we have?"

"Not long. He's on foot and Naugus is gaining fast. Jet and Wave are trying to distract him while he and Nack make a break for it. Maybe only a few minutes."

"A few what?!" Rouge jumped.

"We're the closest to him. And besides, I have a plan…"

Emerging into the deserted club, the group crossed it quickly and headed outside. Amy stepped forward a little and surveyed the scene. No vehicles in sight, they had all long since been dismantled by scavengers. She ran forward a few paces, then leapt into the air, and with a mighty swoop of her scaled wings, she took to the skies, and with speed, she disappeared over the mangled skyline.

"What?! Is she just gonna leave us here?" Blade yelled.

"I think she's got a trick up her sleeve…" Espio replied. A few moments passed. Nothing happened. A few faint clanks and bangs of metal against metal were heard. Then an engine started, but it sounded somewhere between that of a car and a jumbo jet. The sound grew louder, and bursting through some rubble, the car they had arrived in stormed through the central park, and in a fraction of a second, slid to a halt in front of them. Amy sat in the driver's seat, the emerald shard lodged in a makeshift crevice in the dashboard, where it was against a vital part of the engine, appearing to add energy to the vehicle.

"Come on! I haven't got all day!" She jeered. Hurriedly, Espio jumped in the front seat, and Blade and Rouge in the back. She hit the gas, and they were out of the city in no time flat.

"How the hell did you figure this out?" Espio tried to ask, shouting to be heard over the engine and wind, and hanging on to the dashboard for dear life.

"Emerald equals energy. Engine plus energy equals faster engine. Super engine!" She quipped casually. "We should be there in about…" She peered at the clock in the car. "…ninety seconds." Espio gawped. He looked to the side at the scenery flying by, at something approaching thirty thousand miles per hour. Amy just looked casually ahead as landscapes changed with astounding speed. After roughly two minutes, Babylon Garden loomed on the horizon. "Damn. So close."

She brought the car into a slide, slowing it down while still approaching their destination. She could see four, near insignificant dots slowly moving across the land, and as these dots grew closer, their features became more apparent, and they appeared to be running. She slowed the car down to a normal speed and parked up next to them.

"You could use a ride," She laughed, leaping out over the side. "Espio, take the wheel. Nack and the birds will need to squeeze in somewhere. You guys scram while Shadow and I hold Iggy off."

"Right," All the others agreed. The car sped away, but not at the ludicrous speeds it had arrived at; Amy had removed the emerald shard to keep her own form going.

"Shads. What happens to you when you use the emerald?"

"Oh… this." He mumbled, and grabbed his own shard of the emerald, starting his transformation instantly. Amy watched as the two black feathery wings sprouted again, and the chain extended from his arm, kicking a torrent of sand up in the process. The yellow aura returned, but was somehow different this time, it didn't seem quite so… dark. Not in a literal sense, more that it was less menacing, nobler. The dust settled, and he returned to the ground, opening his eyes. "Let's roll."

The pair took flight with their enormous, nearly over-proportioned wings, towards the disintegrating Babylon Garden, where a furious mastermind awaited them.


	50. Chapter 50

A/N: Right! Time to finish this! Been another few months between updates. This time it was because of computer problems, and the fact that I don't like starting something from scratch when it's already half-done, but that work has been lost (i.e. the half-finished chapter 50 sitting on my other, dead computer.) Oh well, best not linger any longer. Exams coming up, but hey, at least I can count this as essay-writing practice.

* * *

"So this means... I'm..."

"Yeah, you're over two hundred years old." Blaze still could not comprehend what had just been revealed to her, while in Tails' mind, it all made sense. "And what it also means, is that I doubt little Vesta here," he expanded, picking up the young child and swinging her round playfully while she giggled. "... is an immortal, or anything like that, so there's something that caused her to jump forward two hundred years."

"But what could do something like that?"

"Well the first thing that springs to mind is some kind of time travel. Robotnik may have had something lying around in here that could have been a primitive time travel device, off of which the one you used to come to now is based."

"That seems... possible..."

"The only other thing I can think of is cryogenic freezing."

"Cryogenic freezing?" Blaze asked.

"Cryogic froozle?" The young Blaze pondered, wondering just what the 'big people' were talking about. Both Tails and the older Blaze smiled.

"Don't you worry your head about it," Tails reassured the child, tussling her hair. She giggled and pulled his hand away. "Cryogenic freezing," he turned to Blaze. "Is a process of preserving stuff by keeping it in liquid nitrogen, which is around minus 200 degrees celsius. But, it's also been known to, with some modifications, work to preserve living beings in a sort of stasis until they are thawed. So, say, she fell into the cryogenic pods, or whatever it is. Then it would be like she's asleep until they return her to a normal temperature. Put simply."

"Right... I only got half of that, but it seems plausible... but wait. If what you say about time travel is true, that I'm from a disjointed segment of time, then it doesn't matter if she gets frozen, or sent forward in time, or whatever, right?"

"Correct. But we can't be sure of that. Although the fact neither you, Silver nor Diesel have changed dramatically or anything like that since you got here would be leaning in favour of my theory. Any which way we're clutching at straws."

Every corridor travelled seemed to get darker, every object discarded he saw more lifeless than the last, as he ventured deeper into the complex. Hopelessly lost at this stage, he was starting to give up hope for success in the mission. Not so much as a map to help guide him around the place. _Oh, this is absolutely fantastic... Silver, old boy, look at the mess you're in now..._ he thought. He stopped eventually, and by the time he had, the corridors were almost pitch-black, and starting to tilt to one side in a strange manner. He looked around, trying to discern some kind of light from something, anything. Through one door it appeared to get a little brighter. He followed the light, seeing no alternative route. The light led him to another corridor, and another, slowly getting brighter and brighter, and he broke into a run. Soon, the light began to take on a colour, a white with a faint blue, and was bright enough that he had to squint. He came upon an open door, where the light seemed to be emanating from, and he hurried through it.

On the other side was a room with several chambers, filled with a swirling, white, translucent liquid. Each one was spewing vapour everywhere, extremely cold vapour. The room stretched on for a long distance, chambers all the way along it. As he continued, he started to see finer details in some of them - different patterns of swirls, and sometimes objects visible within. He stopped at one, out of mere curiosity. He peered closer, trying to discern what the chamber contained. His face millimetres from the glass, he could not have been less prepared when another face swept against the glass, causing him to leap backwards with a shout, and fall over. He stared in horror at the face, and the more he stared, the more it seemed familiar. When the name eventually dawned on him, he scrambled to his feet and started searching for a control panel. He had to rescue her...

"Okay Cream... I think we lost them..."

"How did they find us?"

"I don't know... any kind of heat vision would have been a give away, the whole place is stone cold..."

"Ack... doesn't matter. What do we do now?"

"We have to find the others without attracting the robots' attention again..." Diesel said to her, while scanning the surrounds. He saw a small ventilation shaft near the ground, maybe just big enough for Cream's slight frame to fit through. There was a door next to it, but it was locked. "Cream... I need you to do something..."

"What?" She replied, peering over their cover at the robots on patrol.

"I'm going to slide you across the floor, through that vent over there. Then I need you to open the door from the other side, and let me in. Okay?"

"You _what?!_"

"Just, come on! Do it! They'll find us soon if we don't get somewhere safer!"

"Wh... okay!" At this, she was grabbed roughly by the sides, not entirely expecting it, and was thrown across the floor. It was cold and icy, making her slide easily, but was very cold and uncomfortable. The vent was only just wide enough, and had she not had her hands out in front of her, she would have stuck inside when she came to a halt. Fortunately, though, she was able to navigate the shaft and emerge on the other side, and dusting herself off, she set about opening the door. A keypad with some numbers, and a card slot. _Shit... it's gonna need a code or something..._ _if only..._ she thumped the wall in frustration, and as if by a miracle, the door began to whirr open. She looked at where she hit, and it was a button marked "emergency fire release, penalty for misuse". Just below that in small print, it read "Robotnik Corp takes no responsibility for the fate of employees that press emergency fire release buttons in error or in jest". After taking the time to read the labels, she looked down to see Diesel, slid under the door along his back, clammering to find away to get the door to shut again.

"Just pull it down, it should be fine..." She said, before the fire alarm rang out, alerting all the nearby robots to their presence.

"We got bigger problems now. RUN!" He yelled. She stopped him before he could start, and pointed to the hangar below them, to which they had just entered via a raised walkway.

"Wait... why run, when..." she pointed at the massed vehicles, cars, motorcycles, boards, tanks, and gear of all kinds, on the floor.

"Whoa..."


	51. Chapter 51

"So what now, Sonic? Are you just gonna leave me over here?"

"Unless you're gonna make the jump, I'm gonna have to."

"Fine, will I just wait then?"

"Yep. It's about time you did what you were told, not what you felt like."

"Jeez, Sonic, you can be an asshole sometimes..." Manic muttered. Sonic just grinned, and continued on his way.

His recent burst of energy had to have been due to the presence of the emerald fragment! It couldn't be too far away. He leapt from surface to surface, and sprinted along any straight section of rock or tree, dead or living, he could find, following the route which made him yet more energetic. He reached the peak of the island, able to see every shore created by the island's semi-buoyancy, a view reserved for the Gods themselves; and almost as quickly, he had left his vantage point. Sliding down the slopes on the far side of the mountain, he twirled to and fro between half-dead vines and half-dead seaweed, and into the valley below. He remembered being here many years ago; it was another time then, he had enthusiasm aplenty, and cared as much about his own enjoyment of the experience than he did of the results of his antics, which most of the time involved saving the world from Robotnik's malevolent clutches. But still, time went on, robots became more advanced, new enemies arrived, and ultimately, the situation became more grave, and adventures like this became increasingly hazardous, and thanks to his own maturing body, impossible. He had not reached speeds like this since the age of seventeen, and had sorely missed them.

Dropping from a high cliff and soaring into the river's creek, he grabbed a vine on his way down to swing round and reverse his fall. Letting go at the sweet spot, he rocketed into the air, and in a disorienting turn of circumstances, he lost his balance in mid-flight, and facing up, the sky fell away from him as he plunged to the unknown behind him. Luck was on his side, as he came to a stop much earlier than he anticipated. The dusty ground was an almost flat-horizontal ledge, allowing him to rise to his feet almost immediately. Surveying his surrounds, he deduced that this surface would be impossible to stand straight on when the island was at a normal orientation, and that his fortunate landing was but a fluke. He investigated the ledge, and in a further turn of fortune, he discovered exactly what he was looking for right in front of him. There, on a pedestal, waiting for him, was a clean-cut quarter of the master emerald, doing its best to hold up the island on its own. It shone faintly, half of it a glint from the bright sunlight.

"Come on! Too easy!" He exclaimed. He grasped the emerald, and was confronted with a sudden surge of power, climbing up his arm, filling him with energy. He buckled to his knees, and was forced to close his eyes with the intensity. He could feel the energy being absorbed within him, and the heat building. He didn't know how long it was like this; it felt like forever.

When the intensity had subsided enough to regain control of his body, he stood up gingerly. He wasn't injured, he knew that much. He inspected himself. He noticed a long, flowing leather coat, sleeveless and open-chested, much in the form of the waistcoat he was wearing prior; that was most definitely not there before. Upon further inspection, a pair of stylish sunglasses was in the pocket. Useful in these conditions, if nothing else. Placing them upon his nose, he wandered up to the edge of the platform. Not much in the way of time had passed. He kicked his new, heavy-duty boots on the nearby rocks. They spun up in the air, much higher than one would normally deem possible. He took hold of the emerald shard, fastening it to his belt, and leapt from the ledge, to resume his connected chain of leaps, sprints and flips. However, rather than plummeting into the gorge below, he sailed straight across making contact with the other side.

"Interesting… I wonder what happens when I do this…" He kicked off the wall, downwards to the gorge below. He drifted down slowly, as if gravity was not an issue. Leaning in the direction of his travel, he was able to control his flight-path and velocity with subtle changes in body movement. Quickly becoming used to his new mode of transport, he gathered speed and control, and was doing laps of the island before he knew it.

"Right! Now I've got work to do!" He explained to himself, and started trying to find the others.

Tikal was speechless. Knuckles was the only one there to comfort her, and still she swayed gently in his arms, muttering in tongues to herself. Clearly traumatised, there was nothing he could do to bring her back to her senses, short of restoring all that was to its previous place. He looked to the path that the others had left by, wondering when they would return. The sooner they left, the better, was his reasoning. He contemplated calling some of the other parties to check on their progress. Tikal shivered again, and this drew his attention back to where it was most needed.

"So Sonic's already gone head, you say?"

"Yes. He's just gone and, left us to mill around while he takes all the glory. Fan-fucking-tastic." Manic kicked back against a dead tree. Sally yawned.

"Well that was always his style. I don't suppose he left us any way to help in his 'noble quest'?"

"Calm yourselves!" Nailei barked. "We all know that he has greater abilities than us. It's not like any of the rest of us can do leaps like that, or run on walls. We will do something when it is needed of us." Silence reigned. The four stood around, not talking, waiting. Nailei surveyed the skies, as if watching for something. Not watching the ground, she idly kicked an anthill, and it spilled its angry inhabitants all over her leg. Jak dropped from the tree to assist her, but was confused, ants being uncommon in his native forest.

"Don't just stand there, do something!" She cried out, as they started to bite. Manic rushed over and started brushing them off her leg, and picking away stray ones.

"Don't worry, they're harmless…" He reassured her, as he picked up a branch and fanned them away. He looked up at her again, having calmed down, she smiled at him. He smiled back, and went to say something before…

With a solid thump and a gust of wind, the blue hedgehog and his flowing leathers landed square in the middle of the clearing, a sense of urgency about him.

"Got the emerald. We're going now."

"And we're getting up there," Sally pointed up, back the way they came; "Just how?" She asked. Sonic abruptly grabbed her by the waist, and in a mighty jump, scaled the entire height, and deposited her on her feet. Before she had a chance to react, Manic was standing next to her, and by the time they had any idea what was going on, Sonic had already ferried all four of them to the path.

"Now come on! Let's go!"

"Easy bro, we can't all fly…" Manic muttered. All four of them sprinted to the shore, while Sonic scouted the way ahead.


	52. Chapter 52

Apologies for not updating in a metric yonk, exams started popping up like complaints after Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. You're lucky I'm even writing a chapter right now =P although I do hope to get this finished ASAP, it's been going for almost a year at this rate.

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As the floating island loomed on the horizon, lopsided and starting to fall to the ground, the pair approached by air, as fast as their wings would carry them. These new forms felt strange; but comfortably strange. With immense power at their disposal, they surged forward to do battle with Naugus himself. They uttered not a word to each other, both knowing what must be done, both aware of the consequences of failure. From the speeding hovercar behind them, the only traces of them were two blurs; one of deep pink and red, the other of black and shining yellow.

Upon reaching the base of the rock, they headed sharply upwards. Scaling the few hundred or so metres to the surface in a matter of seconds, they kicked off the ramparts upon reaching their lip and rose up to survey the scene. Although the ground was trembling and the whole superstructure was on the move, there was no sign of their foe. He hadn't even emerged from the tunnels. Exchanging confused glances, they drew closer. Not so much as a sound from him. They nodded and began to seal the exits with any rocks they could find. No sooner had they done that than the rate of the city's turning began to grow. Almost instinctively, they abandoned their endeavours and took flight, and with good reason. Getting as far away as they possibly could, the rumbling peaked, and they heard a cascading roar from behind them. Upon a momentary backwards glance, it became pretty obvious that the entire city had been blown into a thousand pieces from the inside. As the giant pieces of rubble whistled past their ears, they saw the wispy orb floating there amidst the dust, its enraged occupant ready to explode, just like the gardens before him.

"You DARE defy me?" He bellowed. "Feel my wrath, Shadow the Hedgehog!" He rose up to their altitude level, and began to summon a large ball of energy, and concentrated it into a beam, aimed directly at Shadow. Amy quickly leapt to his rescue, and shoved him out of its path, along with herself. All that got hit was a stray feather from Shadow's wings. "Ooh, this is just delicious. You brought me another one of the chosen ones!"

"Chosen one? What the hell are you talking about?" Shadow yelled back.

"Oh, don't act like you don't know what I mean." Naugus replied casually, charging up another beam, while the pair of them frantically took evasive action.

"We can't keep doing this forever, Shadow!" Amy grabbed him in midair and dropped a message to him. He turned and headed back to her, narrowly avoiding another energy blast which hurtled off into space.

"He seems to be more interested in me. I'll distract him while you attack him from behind! His shield goes down when he sends that blast!"

"Are you sure that'll work?"

"It probably won't kill him, but it'll give us enough time to get away!"

"Okay."

"Getting tired yet?" The evil wizard taunted.

"Not a bit!" Shadow yelled, trying to reverse the taunt. With much success aswell; Naugus did not like his fearless attitude one bit. He gathered his energy to smite him, taking as much as he could to minimise the hedgehog's chance of escaping. With an almighty yell, he unleashed the ball, hurtling towards him. But before he could see if the attack had proven successful; he lurched forward a little and coughed. He saw blood fly from his throat and fall the dizzying distance back to the ground. While watching its path, he noticed something else – a smooth, sharp piece of metal protruding from his chest. While inspecting it, he was distracted by a pair of thumps on his back knocking him further forward, and he started to drift down. His power was slowly fading…

"What…"

"Say good night, Iggy." Amy jeered, standing on his back, hanging on by her katana handle, waving her hammer in the air. Shadow ascended in front of them.

"Shadow! But how?" Shadow smirked.

"Forgetting…" He flashed back around a hundred paces in a yellow blur, waved, and returned just as quickly. "… this?" Naugus stared in disbelief, and Shadow whirled in mid-flight, bringing the heel of his boot into sharp impact with Ixus' face, and Amy finished the job with a hammer blow to his nose. Shadow used his chain to get a firm hold of the old man's torso, and with a couple of swings, hurled him to the ground.

"Wow, considering he's only the biggest evil ever to walk Mobius, he did die pretty easily." Amy said, looking down at him in eulogy.

"Something tells me he's not quite dead yet…" Shadow uttered.

"Well then… shouldn't we go down there and finish him off? You know, be thorough?"

"I don't think it's quite as simple as that. We should just go, now, because he is gonna be mad as hell when he gets back…"


End file.
